At half past midnight on a crisp Melbourne morning, two smiling buskers watched as a shiny steel box was hoisted into the heart of the city.
The repurposed newspaper stand had been turned into a lock-up for their precious props, amps and costumes.
While the storage concept was simple, it represented the first of its kind in the busking-friendly city—and a development the duo felt signalled a bright future for Australian street performers.
“We’ve got a space for buskers to feel like we belong,” Street Performance Australia’s secretary, who goes by the stage name Luth Wolff, told AAP.
“It’s a real thing that you can point to and go, ‘This is how much Melbourne backs and supports and is committed to our buskers.’”
The first storage unit is being used as a test case before similar facilities are rolled out in other parts of the cities, considered one of the world’s best for buskers due to the council’s support.
Some performers like Wolff make a living through busking, travelling the world in pursuit of summer weather and large crowds.
A tight-knit network of buskers is usually happy to offer up their couches and homes to people from across the globe during Australia’s holiday period.
“It’s looking like it’s going to be a great summer for international acts starting to come back which is very exciting,” Wolff said.
“We’ve got people who are coming back to Melbourne from the U.S., from New Zealand, from Europe.”
About 2,500 people have been issued with busking permits in Melbourne in 2022.
“Our city’s sound is defined by our buskers,” Melbourne City Mayor Sally Capp told AAP.
Performers will often travel Australia looking for different audiences, although some cities can be more welcoming than others.
Circus performer Hemlock Mejarne says he knows of many Australian buskers who relocated from Sydney and Brisbane to Melbourne.
They thought it was easier to perform in popular public spaces in the southern city, although performers can get permits for certain well-trafficked areas in the east coast capitals.
Markets in Darwin and Hobart are considered major attractions, along with the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
In Western Australia, performers are usually found in Fremantle, where musician John Butler got his start.
“Busking is part of our unwritten right to freely express ourselves on the street,” according to Mejarne, who is president of Street Performance Australia.
“The way that the society feels free to use its streets is often a wonderful barometer of how free that society really is.”
Busking is not allowed in privately-owned public spaces such as Federation Square and Crown, and in certain laneways in Melbourne.
It’s something the performers would like to see changed as they ramp up a push for the city to one day host an international busking event.
“I think it’s a beautiful way to bring people together in a community and it builds social capital in our spaces, it makes people feel safer in public spaces,” Wolff said.
