Square

 

Image: Collins Street, Melbourne in 1905, lantern slide photograph 

taken by my great-uncle John Henry Harvey. Held at the State Library of Victoria.

When illegal Van Diemen’s Land settlers first sailed up Birrarung, why did they imagine a street grid extending a mile in each direction behind all those mangroves? Their thoughts were on a city, not a village, from the first fatal impact. Until then, not one line in the landscape was straight. The square came from Indian garrison towns, keeping everything wanted inside, everything unwanted outside. Such grid towns were seen in maps of ancient China, square as the imprint of a red ink stamp marking possession. The streets were set out in rapid order, exact measurements, perfect corners. The only anomaly to this army fortress being Parisian boulevards launched into bushland in the general direction of the blue hills, the distant prospects, Sydney somewhere, gold someplace, Antarctica. A city was the idea, but what kind of city? So many squares, no city square. Each generation succeeded in avoiding the overwhelming question, as city blocks were populated with buildings grand as London. It took the demolition of a street of Victorian goodness gracious grandioseness behind the cathedral to come close to a city square. Half a square anyway. Lacklustre, with views onto drab sidewalls and lasting but a season, the square became the scene, most memorably, of a moratorium against an Asian war, a conflict based on the unlikely premise that this city will be invaded anytime soon by an army from Annam. This finest hour of popular resistance to stupidity was the square’s raison d’être, in all cultures the square being the agora where everyone meets to congregate, to celebrate, to market, and to protest. Bereft of mangroves and piebald from the Wrecker, the city made half-hearted efforts at a square. Then a main street was turned into a mall, betraying its true shape in commercial interest: a square is there for the market, once citizens sidestep roving trams. Later came Fed Square, a place for the well-fed rather than the fed-up, an eccentrically irregular dodecagon, not a square. Not one inch of its surface was flat, which is how the planners wanted it. Comically yet, the commercial sector vied, year in year out to be the centre of the city. A complex called Melbourne Central was an outstanding example of this complex, which was only ever central in a businessman’s mind. Half the city blocks laid claim to being the centre at one time or another, but none of them, thus far, have been cleared to make way for a city square. Meanwhile crowds will turn into congregations, celebrations are organised where possible, and protests are so carefully stage-managed that police merge in with the protestors. The citizens take coffee in side alleys then walk the grid maze some more, well knowing their bearings, knowing well they’ll not find the centre, that they could wander rubik-like for days without finding their city square.