Richmond

 

The green-light button slides Made in Melbourne door to attention bump for passengers onto elevated platform before reverting to beepbeep door, they alighting into morning sun, bright and semi-cheery. The peppercorn crush underfoot scenting the city side ramps at North Richmond station, here accountant and shopgirl go again down to reality. The golden gateway of the migration boat floats firmly above winding stream of trams and talkback breakfast motorists, street kids about with nowhere to go but a vape pipe and bad phoneline. The transcendent techno orchestrating from wound-down windows in Victoria Street traffic, focused DJ behind his wheel revving oblivious to line dance of street walkers. The Mekong digraphs for grocer and lawyer running up rundown Edwardian shopfronts peel with time’s heat, their named humans unlocking glass doors and setting out A-frames on chains. The eucalyptus pods bursting red flame filaments in murals between dim sum cafes, background to rough sleepers getting their bearings where they sit on the footpath, in Tiger beanies. The cut-price tuxedo warehouse windows reflect passing pedestrians in daily denim and tattoo punkoid and sensible tie and cotton tie-dye, their reflections lithely outpacing stilted showroom mannequins. The lime helmet, near the brewery’s Great Wall of Abbotsford, atop a buckled road sign separated forever from its hire bicycle alone, where schoolboys too busy raving computers and the weekend would think of kicking it down the street. The Skipping Girl with timeless timing descending ascending her neon bar at her new address, that maybe the passing tram passenger, receptionist or brickie, looks up to contemplate now daylight has brought her to a standstill. The blue building foursquare of Baltic build-alls in big boxes, the monster complex of Victoria Gardens beyond beckons the hungry and greedy and lost and gainfully employed into its cantilevered entrances semi-cheerily, their hasty shopping lists look. The facadism warehouse conversions and postmodern apartments layered undulating named for premodern riverine idylls, wherewith random appearances at an upstairs window or burst of convertible from gutter level garage make for signs of life. The eights balancing on Birrarung water their oars winging and wading the sepia surfaces, last December laps downstream dreaming of future autumn carnivals. The peripheral vision cliffs of Barkers Road cutting ivy over stone, a tram driver passing through the looking glass east. The moneyed walls of jointed stone and dappled iron set emphatically against the streets of Studley Park hill, occasional front gardens with referendum Yes placards at fences, unremoved in place remaining Yes for the foreseeable future.