By the time we reached Meyers Place, it had been raining through much of our street-art walk around Melbourne’s CBD. The lane was wet, the sky was grey and we were still looking for the mural we had come to find. Then we turned in from Bourke Street and saw a wall covered in green.
'Jungle Funk' spreads across the walls at the Bourke Street end of Meyers Place in Melbourne. Artwork by Mike Makatron. Photo: The Geo Kid, 21 September 2025.
This was Jungle Funk, a large mural by Melbourne artist Mike Makatron. It spreads across several levels of the building, winding around windows, doors, pipes, lights and signs. Against the wet laneway and the concrete towers behind it, the greens and turquoise blues were impossible to miss.
We had spent the day exploring street art across Melbourne’s CBD, but finding Jungle Funk felt different. The mural was not simply an image placed in a city lane. It was part of a broader attempt to bring greenery, people and new life into a space once used mainly for services and vehicles. To understand the artwork, we needed to look at both the painted jungle and the real city growing around it.
Street Art Explorers — At a Glance
| Artwork | Jungle Funk |
| Artist | Mike Maka, professionally known as Mike Makatron |
| Created | 2017 |
| Location | Bourke Street end of Meyers Place, Melbourne CBD, Victoria, Australia |
| Project | City of Melbourne’s Green Your Laneway pilot program |
| The Geo Kid visit | 21 September 2025 |
| What to look for | Dense vegetation, water, animals, insects, discarded technologies and painted details that wrap around the building |
| Navigation skill | Moving from a general street address to the precise position of an artwork inside a city laneway |
The City of Melbourne identifies the mural by title and artist and places it at the Bourke Street end of Meyers Place. Mike Makatron’s own mural portfolio also records the matching work at “Meyers Pl + Bourke St Melbourne CBD.” [1, 2]
Watch Geo Find Jungle Funk
Discover the Art
You cannot take in Jungle Funk in a single glance. It rises above street level and stretches along the building, turning the façade into a layered forest. The windows interrupt the painted scene, but they also become part of it. Branches appear to travel between them, large leaves gather around their frames, and a reptile-like creature rests high above the footpath.
Look more closely and the wall becomes crowded with smaller discoveries. Butterflies and other insects appear among the foliage. A ladybird sits on an oversized blue-green leaf. There are unusual flowers, a pool fed by waterfalls and thick leaves painted with bright drops of water. Near the lower edge of the wall, Mike Makatron’s name is worked into the scene rather than placed outside it like a conventional label.
The mural is not made only from images of nature. Among the plants are pieces of human technology, including an older mobile phone and screen-like objects that appear to have been left behind or overtaken. The building’s real equipment adds another layer: security cameras, lights, signs, pipes and windows remain visible on top of the painted environment. The result is a wall where nature, machines and architecture occupy the same space.
That mixture matters, but we should not rush to explain it. Street Art Explorers begin by separating what we can see from what we think it might mean.
Look First, Explain Later
Before reading about the artist, spend a minute exploring the mural with your eyes. Which detail did you notice first: the large animal, the waterfall, the bright flowers or something much smaller? Where do the real parts of the building end and the painted world begin? Which pieces of technology can you find among the plants? Do they appear protected by the jungle, abandoned inside it or slowly disappearing beneath it?
Do not worry about finding one “right” answer. The point is to slow down, notice details and explain what you think using evidence from the artwork. You may even change your mind when someone else points out something you missed.
What Does Jungle Funk Mean?
We have not found a reliable statement in which Mike Makatron explains the meaning of this particular mural detail by detail. That is important to say. Without the artist’s own explanation, it would be easy to turn our interpretation into a claim about his intentions.
What we do know is that Mike describes his wider practice as imagining nature pushing back against human expansion and reclaiming space from an indifferent civilisation. His work repeatedly explores the tension between humans, animals and machines and invites viewers to reconnect with the natural world. [3]
Mike’s broader themes offer one way to read Jungle Funk. The mural shows plants and animals spreading across a constructed wall while human technologies sit among the vegetation. It can feel as though the jungle is reclaiming the building, but that is our interpretation rather than a confirmed explanation from the artist. You might instead see a future in which nature and the city coexist, or a reminder that the natural world is never as separate from urban life as it seems.
The mural’s location makes that question even more interesting. This painted forest was created as part of a real project to introduce more living vegetation into Melbourne’s laneways. It leaves us wondering whether nature can reclaim space in a dense city—and what it takes to help that nature survive.
Meet Mike Makatron
Mike Maka, known professionally as Mike Makatron, is a multidisciplinary artist who works across large-scale murals, painting, illustration and sculpture. He is a long-time member of Melbourne’s Everfresh Studio and has created work in Australia and internationally. His work is represented in private and public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. [3]
Mike’s official record lists him as a featured artist for two City of Melbourne greening-laneway projects. His mural portfolio includes several views of the Meyers Place and Bourke Street artwork, showing how the jungle imagery travels across different sections of the building. [2, 3]
His painted marks are also part of the experience of finding the work. In our photographs, “Mike Makatron” and “Maka Tron” appear among the leaves and creatures. Locating an artist’s signature can help confirm that you have found the right artwork, but it should be checked alongside reliable information from the artist, the commissioning organisation or another authoritative source.
Why Meyers Place?
Meyers Place is one of Melbourne’s older laneways. It connects Bourke Street with Little Collins Street between Exhibition and Spring streets and was previously known as Nicholas Lane. Historical records show that the lane supported trades, small businesses and residents during the nineteenth century. Its uses included refreshment rooms, tobacconists, a pawnbroker and a post and telegraph office. [4]
Like many Melbourne lanes, it was originally shaped by the practical needs of the city. Laneways provided access behind larger street-front buildings and made room for deliveries, services, waste and smaller premises. Over time, many of these narrow spaces gained new roles as pedestrian routes and destinations for food, culture and art.
The City now describes Meyers Place as a mixture of outdoor dining, bars, coffee, street art and greenery. Part of the lane has been closed to vehicles, giving people more room to walk, gather and dine. The lane is still narrow and functional, but it is no longer treated merely as the space behind the main streets. [5]
It is a fitting home for Jungle Funk. The artwork asks us to pay attention to a wall that might otherwise be passed without a second glance, while the lane itself shows how cities can give overlooked spaces a new purpose.
Green Your Laneway
Jungle Funk was created through the City of Melbourne’s Green Your Laneway pilot program. The project began with the assessment of more than 250 central-city laneways in 2015, followed by community consultation, site investigations and design development. A temporary green-laneway prototype was installed at Meyers Place for two weeks in November 2016, allowing ideas to be tested before the permanent works were completed. [6]
In 2017, four CBD laneways received different forms of greening: Coromandel Place, Guildford Lane, Katherine Place and Meyers Place. The aim was not simply to make them look attractive. The pilots tested how plants could be established and maintained in difficult urban environments where sunlight, water, heat, access and responsibility for ongoing care could all create problems. [6]
At Meyers Place, the completed works included eight street trees, an in-ground planter, a wall-mounted succulent planter, a living green wall, a water tank, irrigation measures and the wall mural. The middle section of the lane was also closed to car traffic. Community members had asked for a place designed more for people, with diverse planting and a vertical, connected corridor of green that would retain the lane’s quirky character. [6]
A City Never Stands Still
There is now a useful “before” photograph of the site. On 3 August 2016, photographer Nick-D made an image looking south along Meyers Place from near the Bourke Street entrance. Comparing its building openings and lane geometry with later photographs indicates that the pale wall on the left is the surface that would be painted with Jungle Funk the following year. [7]
A greening project does not end on opening day. Five years after the four pilot laneways were completed, the City of Melbourne returned to see what had survived, what had struggled and what could be learned. Across the program, the review found that laneway greening could provide social, environmental, economic, health and wellbeing benefits. Lasting results, however, depended on suitable plants, reliable watering, clear maintenance arrangements and support from local communities and businesses. [6]
At Meyers Place, the living wall was performing strongly and had become a visitor attraction, while some other planting faced problems involving heat, shade, maintenance, vandalism and changes to drainage. Some street trees had to be replaced. The lesson was not that urban greening had failed. It was that making a city greener involves much more than installing plants and walking away.
When we visited in September 2025, Jungle Funk was still clearly visible at the entrance to the lane. It also carried signs of the working city around it: doors, windows, lights, signs, cameras, marks and later additions all shared the wall. This is part of the nature of street art. Unlike an artwork protected inside a gallery, a mural exists outdoors, where weather, buildings and human activity continue to alter its setting.
Our rainy-day photographs and video now form a record of how the artwork and its surroundings looked eight years after the 2017 project. If the wall changes in the future, those images will help show one stage in the life of the place.
Navigate With Geo
The Mission
Street Art Explorers uses art as a destination for practising real navigation. The aim is not simply to enter a location into a phone and follow a dot. We want to understand where the artwork sits within the city and recognise the clues that tell us we have reached the right place.
For Jungle Funk, we begin with Melbourne, narrow the search to the eastern side of the CBD, use Parliament Station as a landmark, find the streets that frame Meyers Place and then identify the mural at the Bourke Street entrance. By the time we reach the coordinate, we should already have begun building a mental map of this part of the city.
NAVIGATE WITH GEO
Use the interactive map as your starting point. Zoom out to see where Meyers Place sits within central Melbourne, then zoom in to find Bourke Street, Little Collins Street and the mural site.
How to Navigate This Place
Mural Site
144.972108° E
Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
Step 1: Orient Yourself in Melbourne
Open Google Earth or Google Maps and search for Melbourne, Australia, but do not zoom straight into Meyers Place. Begin far enough out to recognise Port Phillip Bay and the shape of the city around it. Find central Melbourne, then look for the rectangular street pattern of the CBD.
This first step is called orientation. Before searching for one narrow laneway, we work out where the destination sits within the larger city. Moving between these different scales helps us understand a place instead of seeing only a pin on a screen.
Step 2: Find a Strong Landmark
Now locate Parliament Station near the eastern edge of the CBD. A railway station is a useful navigation anchor because it appears clearly on most maps and is also something we can recognise when moving through the city.
From the station, find Bourke Street and notice how it runs west through the CBD. Meyers Place is nearby, but it is much narrower than the major streets around it. The useful relationship to remember is that the mural sits in the eastern part of central Melbourne, close to Parliament Station and just off Bourke Street.
Step 3: Find the Lane
Look for Bourke Street and Little Collins Street between Exhibition Street and Spring Street. Meyers Place runs north to south between them. Its name may be marked on the map, although the lane can be easy to overlook when the surrounding streets are shown at the same time.
A search for “Meyers Place” should bring you to the lane, but it does not necessarily identify the exact section of wall covered by Jungle Funk. This is where map reading begins to work together with observation.
Step 4: Find the Artwork
Approach Meyers Place from Bourke Street and slow down as you reach the entrance. Look at the buildings rather than only at the roadway. Jungle Funk begins at this end of the lane and climbs across the tall wall around real windows, doors, lights and signs.
Use the mural’s relationship with the building to confirm that you are in the right place. Look for the broad areas of green and turquoise, the windows surrounded by painted vegetation and the bright yellow door. Comparing these fixed features with our streetscape photograph is more reliable than depending on a general lane address alone.
Step 5: Read the Coordinates
The working Street Art Explorers coordinate for the mural site is 37.812152° S, 144.972108° E. In decimal notation, the same location is written -37.812152, 144.972108. The minus sign before the latitude tells a digital map that the location is south of the Equator.
This is a practical mural-site coordinate rather than a surveyed point on the painted surface. It is intended to bring you to the Bourke Street end of Meyers Place, where the wall and the surrounding visual clues can complete the search.
Latitude measures distance north or south of the Equator, while longitude measures distance east or west of the Prime Meridian. Coordinates are useful because the same system can identify locations anywhere in the world, even when street names and address formats differ.
Step 6: Verify the Location
Good navigation does not rely blindly on one piece of information. Once you have found Jungle Funk, check the location in another way. If you began with the coordinate, zoom out and confirm that you are between Bourke Street and Little Collins Street near Parliament Station. If you began with the lane name, enter the coordinate and see whether it returns you to the same end of Meyers Place.
Then compare the physical setting with the photographs in this article. Can you match the shape of the wall, the windows, the yellow door and the direction in which the artwork continues along the lane? Digital maps can contain old imagery or pins placed in the centre of a property, so these real-world clues matter.
Step 7: Build a Mental Map
Now remove the mural pin and see whether you can find the location again. Start with central Melbourne, locate Parliament Station, find Bourke Street, identify Meyers Place and work out which entrance contains the mural.
If you can repeat the route without following turn-by-turn instructions, you have begun to build a mental map. This is the internal picture we create of the relationships among landmarks, streets, directions and destinations. A device can tell us where to turn next; a mental map helps us understand why that turn makes sense.
The Geo Navigation Challenge
Imagine that somebody has asked you how to find Jungle Funk, but you are not allowed to give them the coordinates or send them a destination pin. What sequence of clues would you use?
You might begin with Parliament Station, direct them towards Bourke Street and then ask them to look for Meyers Place between Bourke and Little Collins streets. For the final clue, you could describe the towering green wall and its bright yellow door. Another navigator may choose different landmarks. The challenge is to explain the relationships clearly enough for somebody else to complete the search.
Explore the Area
Let the Artwork Become the Starting Point
Finding Jungle Funk does not have to end the expedition. The opening montage in our video features murals from Hosier Lane, AC/DC Lane and Duckboard Place. Hosier Lane is an ever-changing collection of murals, paste-ups and smaller works; AC/DC Lane is known for art celebrating rock music; and nearby Duckboard Place brings together large murals, posters and smaller pieces. All three appear on the City of Melbourne’s street-art walk. [1]
Use the interactive map in the Navigate With Geo section above as your starting point. Zoom out from Meyers Place until you can see more of Melbourne’s CBD, then try to locate one of these three street-art destinations without leaving this article. Before following turn-by-turn directions, work out which direction you would need to travel from Jungle Funk and identify one or two streets or landmarks that could guide you.
Compare the route you planned with the route suggested by the map. Is the quickest route also the easiest to understand? Would a slightly longer route give you stronger landmarks or help you avoid a confusing intersection? Repeating this process turns a street-art walk into practical geography: each artwork becomes a new destination, and the streets between them become part of the lesson.
Visiting Responsibly
Meyers Place remains a working city lane with businesses, doorways, outdoor dining and occasional vehicle activity. Stay aware of traffic, keep entrances clear and take photographs without blocking other people. The opposite side of the lane gives a better view of the mural’s scale, but only move into a photography position when it is safe to do so.
Street art and its surroundings can change. Before making a special trip, check current City information and remember that finding something different is also part of exploring a living city.
Bring the Conversation Home
Jungle Funk gives families several ways to continue learning after leaving the lane. Which parts of your own neighbourhood could support more plants, shade or habitat? What practical problems would need to be solved to keep that greenery alive? Could an artwork change how people feel about an overlooked wall or walkway, even before any physical planting begins?
You can also invent a nature-reclaims-the-city artwork of your own. Begin with a real building, bus stop, fence or laneway, then decide what plants, animals and traces of human technology might take over the space. The challenge is not simply to fill the page with green. Think about how your natural world would interact with the architecture already there.
What We Brought Home
We arrived at Meyers Place looking for a mural. What we found was a lesson in how art, geography and city planning can meet on one wall.
Jungle Funk rewards close looking, but its setting makes the story larger. The painted forest imagines nature spreading through an urban building. Around it, the Green Your Laneway project tested whether real plants could be brought into a narrow, complicated city space—and what would be required to keep them there.
The rain did not spoil our search. It became part of our memory of the place: the shine of the road, the grey buildings and the sudden wall of green waiting at the entrance to the lane.
The next time you explore a city, look beyond the famous streets. Turn into the smaller lanes, study the walls and ask what the place used to be, what it has become and what it might become next.
Travel with us. Learn with us. Bring the world home.
References
- [1] City of Melbourne — Melbourne street art walk and Meyers Place. Artwork identification, artist and location at the Bourke Street entrance to Meyers Place.
- [2] Mike Makatron — Murals. Artist portfolio containing matching images labelled “Meyers Pl + Bourke St Melbourne CBD.”
- [3] Mike Makatron — About Mike Maka. Artist biography and documented themes of nature, humanity and machines across his wider practice.
- [4] The Encyclopedia of Melbourne — Meyers Place, University of Melbourne. Former name, connections and nineteenth-century uses.
- [5] Open House Melbourne and City of Melbourne — The Pocket Book of Melbourne Laneways, July 2024. Description of Meyers Place, its role in Melbourne’s laneway network and its physical features.
- [6] City of Melbourne — Green Your Laneway Project Evaluation — Summary Report 2023, August 2023. Program history, aims, timeline, Meyers Place improvements, evaluation findings and community aspirations.
- [7] Nick-D — Meyers Place August 2016, Wikimedia Commons. Photographed 3 August 2016 and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
First-Hand Source
The Geo Kid visited and photographed Jungle Funk and Meyers Place on 21 September 2025 while exploring street art in Melbourne CBD. The day was rainy, as recorded in the photographs and video footage. First-hand descriptions of the weather, encounter, visible imagery and condition of the site are based on that visit.