Adventure: Impala Rollerskate Meetup – Melbourne

A while back I saw a flash of event details on the Impala Rollerskates’ Instagram of a skate meet up in Melbourne. I didn’t know if I’d be available but as the day grew closer I realised I would be. I was all excited and prepared when the night before I had an arthritis-related fatigue spell. However, in a beautiful moment of serendipity in the morning, the fatigue had passed and I was well enough to go.

I drove to Melbourne and met the girls at Southbank. Madi and Lilly were the ambassadors for Impala and leading the skate. They gave me some one-on-one lessons in stopping while we waited for others to arrive. I asked them to do tricks while I photographed them. Eventually, a whole bunch of awesome women arrived with a range of experience levels. Some were into roller-disco. Some did tricks. The experience level ranged from first-time-on-skates to jumping-off-nearby-steps. We’d only met minutes earlier but it didn’t take long until we were calling out to each other by name and looking out for each other as we skated through Southbank. It was an amazing feeling. Less like a community and more like a friendship group. As we zigzagged along Southbank we all tried to navigate our way and also stopped occasionally for snacks. Lilly and Madi didn’t just give us skating tips, they showed us how to set up our skates, how to lace them up, what to look for to know we’re prepped properly to do our best skating. They gave us free Impala socks (I’ve lost mine like a total idiot). The environment was encouraging and exciting and completely free of judgement or ego.

Skating in a group was crazy inspiring. Everyone was excited to see what others were doing and it made you want to have a go, take greater risks and be part of it. As we skated toward the Globe factory, we came by one of those massive architectural features that the overpass goes through. When we got to the bottom we discovered it was an accidental half pipe. Of course it took one woman to look at it smugly and climb up on it to see how skateable it was.

Those of us not up to the level of having a go helped the others get up and down, took videos and pictures and cheered them on as the tried different tricks. It was awesome! Then we got on the roads, skating right down the centre line in a stretched-out group and slowly wove our way to the Globe factory.

I had to leave then and one of the women let me use her uber app to get a ride back to my car because I was in a rush. There was such an amazing sense of connection and passion for skating. I was so ridiculously in love with photographing them all. I’m going to skate as much as possible in the coming weeks so that I can be more confident to multitask photographing and skating next time.

If you’ve ever considered getting skates or coming to a meet-up, I highly recommend!

– L

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