The Melbourne Snap⚡ - Friday 3 January, weekend edition
Car explodes in St Kilda arson attack, Robbie Williams praises Melbourne but has pop at ABC, taxi scam warning and five things to do this weekend.
G’day and welcome to The Melbourne Snap. We’re agonisingly close to 200 subscribers, The Snap has been stuck near there for a few days now. If you’re reading this and not yet a subscriber please consider signing up (it’s free) to get us over the line. Here’s Friday’s extended weekend edition.
💥This (link below) is the dramatic moment a car on Alexandra Street, St Kilda East was deliberately set on fire last night. A person can be seen setting the car alight, it ignites and explodes before the assailant hops in a car and speeds off.
➡️St Kilda East is right next door to Ripponlea where a synagogue was firebombed last month, sparking fears the arson attack was anti-semitic.
➡️But MP for Caulfield David Southwick said Victorian Police confirmed the incidents were “not racially, religiously, or politically motivated.” - Twitter/X
🚕Taxi passengers have been warned to be on high alert for price gouging attempts ahead of the Australian Open amid calls on the government to crack down on a new extra charges scam. - Nine News
🚁It’s been a very busy week for police in the city’s east and southeast suburbs. In a seven-day blitz cops have arrested 41 people – the majority of whom are youths. If you’ve heard the force’s Air Wing helicopter over your home in the evening this may partly explain why. It’s been used extensively to help round up offenders. - Victoria Police
☀️☀️⛅Weekend weather
Crime Watch
This section is dedicated to crime news. Scroll on if you want to skip to lighter news.
👮A 12-year-old and five teenagers were arrested in Blairgowrie after a string of alleged robberies down the Mornington Peninsular. The moment cops nabbed the suspected thieves at a servo in Rye was caught in CCTV and was in yesterday’s Snap. - Nine News
🚋A car ploughed into a tram stop on the corner of Carlisle Street and Chapel Street in Balaclava yesterday afternoon. Witnesses say an elderly man hit the stop at “crazy speed.” It is not believed anyone was injured. - Reddit
🚧Police are seeking witnesses following a serious collision between a car and motorcycle in Broadmeadows on Thursday evening. Emergency services were called to the intersection of Smiley Road and Camp Road. - Eyewatch (Facebook)
🕵🏻♀️A man has been charged following a spate of burglaries in the eastern suburbs. The burglaries, between October and December last year, were primarily at commercial premises across 18 different suburbs. - Victoria Police
🚨Two men have been charged after a large cannabis crop was located by police inside a Braeside factory on New Year’s Eve. - Victoria Police
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🎤"I feel incredibly at home here, I feel safe, and I also feel loved and embraced," those were the words of Britsh popstar Robbie Williams as he gave a free show in Federation Square yesterday afternoon. The singer is in town promoting his new Melbourne-made biopic Better Man. - ABC
➡️The show was a surprise announcement made just 24 hours prior but 50-year-old Robbie can still draw a huge crowd with ease as a picture from Melbourne’s Skydeck showed. One superfan had rushed down from Magnetic Island, Queensland to be there. - Nine News
➡️The Brit also took a pop at the ABC for its criticism of his New Year’s Eve show, telling them to “f*** off”. - Herald Sun
🔎As the search for a missing Melbourne bushwalker in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains concludes its eighth day, the man’s friends say they have been given hope by the discovery of some of his possessions. - ABC
🚇Commuters across Melbourne could miss out on the full benefits promised by the $15 billion Metro Tunnel because related network upgrades to two already-strained train lines have been cut from the project to rein in its ballooning budget. - The Age
🏠Owner-occupier buyers in Victoria could benefit from an investor sell-off that has been gathering momentum alongside falling house prices, an expert says. - The Guardian
🪩Section 8, the CBD’s popular container bar, has announced its summer line-up for January. - Beat
🎉5 things to do this weekend 🎉
Visit the ‘world’s first prison-themed cocktail bar: Alcotraz. Pull on an orange jumpsuit, get in a cell and try to hide your contraband from the guards in this immersive experience in the CBD. - More Info
Head to The District Docklands and go on a space adventure at Saboteurs. It’s basically a real-life version of the popular video game Among Us. - More Info
Find artworks, props, sets, costumes and more from familiar works like Blade Runner 2047 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at The Future & Other Fictions exhibition at ACMI. - More info
If you’re looking for something a little different SENSAS in South Yarra might be for you. SENSAS is a two-hour team challenge that tests each of your senses across six different rooms. More info
Escape the city for a cherry-picking festival just east of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley. Get over to CherryHill Orchards to pick and eat as many cherries as your heart desires. It ends on Sunday. - More info
Sensas Experience
📈And finally…Melbourne’s west is Australia’s fastest-growing region. It’s a major factor in the city’s explosive growth which has seen the population here soar by a third since the turn of the millennium, from 3.5 million to 5.2 million people. Today, nine in every 100 residents in the western suburbs are Indian-born and it hosts Australia’s largest Indian diaspora. The Age has a fascinating four-part series on the growing pains of the booming western suburbs.
Thank you for reading edition 33 of The Melbourne Snap. You can read yesterday’s edition here. I write this newsletter in the early hours every weekday morning between 4am - 6:30am in my free time. If you can afford to support the newsletter you can do so for as little as $10 a month. Have a great weekend.