Alexander Kuleshov arrived in Melbourne by ship on 7 November 1956, together with most of the Soviet team. “With mixed feelings we came to Melbourne. What awaited us in this distant country?” he wrote in his diary, which he published as a book, Under the Southern Skies. The 34-year-old writer had come to Melbourne to report on the Olympic Games. A member of the Communist Party, he was a member of the Writers’ Union of the USSR and a trusted comrade. He worked as a sports commentator and journalist, and wrote detective and science fiction novels. His observations and responses to Australia are therefore interesting.
As the athletes disembarked, it was dark but this did not stop a large crowd meeting them at Appleton Dock. Many brought flowers, while press photographers flashes blinded them. Some protesters, probably anti-communist emigres, heckled from behind a police cordon.
Over the next month, Kuleshov had an opportunity to see how average Australians lived.
He was surprised on how spread out the city was, with single storey “neat houses surrounded by fences, front gardens and lawns, watered by artificial rain.” Presumably he is referring to sprinklers. Houses were adorned by either the Olympic Rings, Australian flags and even concrete kangaroos and koalas.
Kuleshov also had an opportunity to visit seaside towns along Port Phillip Bay, which he compared to Malakhovka, where many privileged Russians owned dachas (holiday houses).
While most of Melbourne was low rise, the central city area was different, with high-rise emporiums and multi-storey office buildings. He was particularly impressed with the diorama outside Coles. It consisted of a large figure of John Batman, the founder of Melbourne, who wore a wide-brimmed hat and smoked a pipe, while looking at the virgin forest. Suddenly the forest disappears and in its place is modern Melbourne.
