Ageing (February)

Trinity College Squash Courts: knocked down. St Moritz Ice Rink: arson. The CRA in Collins Street: once Melbourne’s tallest building, now cute nostalgia. Carlton Brewery: downed. Allen’s Lolly Factory: swallowed up. Festival Hall: slated for flattening. Lost buildings teach us ageing. Same wherever. It’s a salutary game, this February, remembering them, moving spaciously through them, even as they are gone, while living with others one never expected. Federation Square: as a critic wrote, a stack of crumpled Gucci bags. The apartment tower rising above the hospitals on Heidelberg, like those in Caulfield, Doncaster, South Yarra: sign of things to come.