Exclusive: Why I Fled Melbourne

Exclusive: I fled Melbourne after discovering Toorak’s cocaine-fuelled private-school Mums were snorting their inheritance off Great-Grandma’s antique sideboard

By Lady Chardonnay von Rooted-Bottom III

(Formerly known as Shazza McTits, international socialite, recovering champagne enthusiast and self-appointed moral guardian of Australia’s upper classes.)

I thought I’d seen everything. Then I went to a Toorak dinner party and watched a woman named C’ntessa von Trustfund inhale half her father’s estate through a rolled-up $100 note.

Darlings, I am absolutely fucking devastated.

After 25 glorious years living amongst Sydney’s finest coke-snorting property developers, morally bankrupt investment bankers and surgically enhanced Eastern Suburbs socialites, I decided I needed something more sophisticated.

Something cultured.

Something European.

Something with fewer people called Braxton.

So naturally, I moved to Melbourne.

I purchased a charming little $4.8 million terrace in South Yarra, employed a Nepalese housekeeper named Gary, and immediately enrolled in Pilates classes where the women wore $900 leggings to exercise muscles they hadn’t personally used since 1997.

I thought I’d found paradise.

How catastrophically fucking wrong I was.

The night my Tiffany pearls nearly fell into the charcuterie

It began innocently enough.

I’d been invited to a modest little gathering at the Toorak residence of my dear acquaintance, Lady Felicity Fucklebottom-Wankington, whose husband, Sir Rupert Rootsworth IV, inherited several shopping centres after his grandfather accidentally purchased half of Victoria during the Depression.

Felicity greeted me wearing a $14,000 Chanel cardigan and holding a crystal flute of champagne.

“Darling! You’ve arrived! Would you like a bump?”

Naturally, I assumed she meant the stock market.

“Good heavens, Felicity! Is the ASX performing?”

“No, you silly c*nt. Cocaine.”

I nearly swallowed my pearl earrings.

There, upon an eighteenth-century mahogany dining table imported from the estate of some unfortunate deceased European aristocrat, lay enough Colombian marching powder to keep the entire Collingwood Football Club awake until the next premiership.

Beside it stood Mrs Penelope Arseworth-Smythe, chairwoman of the St Bastard’s Grammar School Parents’ Association.

She was chopping lines with her deceased grandmother’s platinum American Express card.

“Penny!” I exclaimed. “Surely this isn’t appropriate!”

She looked at me as though I’d suggested sending her children to a government school.

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. It’s ethically sourced.”

The horror behind Melbourne’s heritage-listed doors

I soon discovered this wasn’t an isolated incident.

Melbourne’s wealthiest mothers weren’t simply consuming cocaine.

They were consuming their intergenerational wealth through their fucking nostrils.

At one particularly distressing charity luncheon for disadvantaged children, I witnessed Lady Prunella Cockburn-Fitzwank disappear into the powder room with three investment bankers, a retired AFL champion and a woman who claimed to own Tasmania.

They emerged forty-seven seconds later, perspiring enthusiastically and announcing plans to establish a foundation for disadvantaged polo ponies.

The horror.

The hypocrisy.

The sheer lack of decorum.

One woman even admitted she’d purchased her cocaine using dividends from a family trust established in 1886.

I was physically sick.

Although, admittedly, that may have been the oysters.

Inheritance: The new gateway drug

Take my former neighbour, Mrs Camilla Fannywhistle-Mountbatten-Ballsack.

Camilla is 53, owns four investment properties, drives a Bentley Bentayga and has never worked a day in her life.

Her father recently died, leaving her $17 million, a vineyard and a controlling interest in a company that manufactures hospital bedpans.

Naturally, she was devastated.

For almost eleven minutes.

Then she ordered three kilograms of cocaine and booked a wellness retreat in Byron Bay.

“It’s what Daddy would have wanted,” she explained.

Apparently Daddy had wanted her to study medicine.

But Daddy was dead.

And cocaine was available.

Such is the tragedy of modern Australia.

The class system is alive, well and truly off its fucking face

What shocked me most wasn’t the drugs.

After all, I’m a sophisticated woman of the world.

I’ve attended parties in Monaco, Ibiza, London and Double Bay where the guests were so chemically enhanced they could hear colours.

No, what appalled me was the snobbery.

At one dinner party, Mrs Arabella Twattingham-Ponce refused to sit beside a woman whose children attended a Catholic school.

“A public Catholic school?” she whispered, horrified.

“Arabella,” I replied, “you’ve just snorted $800 worth of cocaine off a commemorative plate featuring Queen Elizabeth II.”

“Yes, darling,” she replied. “But at least my children attend Scotch.”

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is everything wrong with Melbourne.

Apparently you can be a morally bankrupt, inheritance-snorting, tax-minimising, Range Rover-driving degenerate.

But God fucking help you if your grandfather was a plumber.

And don’t get me started on the wokeness

Melbourne has become intolerably woke.

Everywhere you look, people are discussing climate change, Aboriginal reconciliation, public transport and whether poor people deserve somewhere to live.

It’s exhausting.

At a recent charity auction, a young woman suggested that perhaps Australia’s wealthiest families should contribute more tax.

I nearly choked on my ethically harvested Tasmanian truffle.

“Darling,” I explained, “if we paid more tax, how would we afford the cocaine?”

She had no answer.

Typical university-educated socialist.

Worse still, one guest arrived in an electric vehicle.

An ELECTRIC VEHICLE.

At a cocaine party!

Where has Australian society gone wrong?

The final straw: a machete-wielding grandmother

My departure was sealed at an exclusive gathering in Brighton.

I was enjoying a perfectly acceptable $600 bottle of Burgundy when Dame Beryl Shagnasty-Bumcrack, aged 78, entered the drawing room carrying a machete.

“Where’s the fucking charcuterie?” she demanded.

Naturally, everyone panicked.

Not because of the machete.

Because Beryl was wearing last season’s Zimmermann.

She explained she’d brought the machete to cut the brie, having misplaced the family cheese knife during a particularly vigorous Christmas gathering.

The police were never called.

Beryl’s husband owns a substantial portion of the police station.

I knew then that I had to leave.

Why I’m returning to Sydney

Some readers may accuse me of hypocrisy.

Nonsense.

Yes, I’ve lived a colourful life.

Yes, I’ve associated with wealthy degenerates.

Yes, I’ve attended parties where the cocaine budget exceeded the annual operating expenditure of a regional hospital.

But I have standards.

In Sydney, people snort cocaine in bathrooms with Italian marble, overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean.

In Melbourne, they do it off antique mahogany furniture while discussing which private school has the best rowing program.

It’s simply fucking uncivilised.

Sydney cocaine is aspirational.

Melbourne cocaine is inherited.

Sydney cocaine comes with ocean views.

Melbourne cocaine comes with a family crest.

And most importantly, Sydney’s morally bankrupt socialites have the decency to wear expensive activewear while destroying their nasal septums.

So I’m returning to Bondi.

To sunshine.

To beautiful beaches.

To overpriced property.

To investment bankers named Lachie, Hugo and Sebastian.

To a city where the wealthy are openly insufferable, rather than quietly insufferable behind heritage-listed doors.

As I packed my Louis Vuitton luggage, my dear friend Lady C’ntessa telephoned.

“Darling, are you really leaving us?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m afraid Melbourne has become too depraved.”

“But what about our farewell party?”

I hesitated.

“Will there be champagne?”

“Of course.”

“Caviar?”

“Naturally.”

“And cocaine?”

“Only the finest, darling.”

I considered this carefully.

“Well, perhaps one final evening.”

After all, one mustn’t become a fucking extremist.

Editor’s note

All characters, names, schools, incidents, cocaine quantities, inherited fortunes, machete-wielding grandmothers and morally compromised aristocrats in this article are entirely fictional.

Any resemblance to actual Melbourne socialites, Daily Mail columnists, property developers, private-school parents or individuals named Fucklebottom-Wankington is purely coincidental.

The Department has independently reviewed this article and determined that it contains no evidence of satire.

The review was conducted by the Department.

Its independence is therefore assured.

NEXT WEEK: “I discovered my husband’s mistress drives a BYD. Has Albanese destroyed traditional Australian adultery?”

COMING SOON: “Dan Andrews personally responsible for cocaine shortage at Toorak charity gala, sources claim.”

🐧 THE PENGUIN DIARIES – Where the cocaine is imaginary, the entitlement is hereditary, and the outrage is absolutely fucking complimentary.