Mernda (August)

At Jolimont the name merges from the dark, above the driver’s compartment. It will become commonplace after this August, orange as Dandenong and Williamstown. It’s the furthest reaches of the system now. The automated lady on platform-speakers stretches the name beyond the limits of educated Australian: M-E-R-R-R-N-D-A. I wait for my Eltham. I notice that Mernda contains dream, start imagining all the dreams that went into Mernda, another village-become-suburb of outer Melbourne. Like Hawthorn once, and Ivanhoe. It takes Google to tell me it’s local Wurundjeri for ‘earth’, the earth covered today with more and more roads and rail lines.