Bridge

 

Beside the river, below the bridge, is Studley Park Vineyard. Autumn has got hold of the vineyard, just as it changes the surrounding trees. A few times a week now I walk the length of the bridge, its walkway above the vineyard, to and from work. And one thing about a narrow footbridge is I see everyone’s faces, close up for passing seconds. I give thanks for each person in their being who crosses the bridge, more real than myriad fleeting faces on computer screens of daily life. Only, what to divine from their features? What labyrinth of thought goes on behind their well-washed appearances? The schoolboy with earnest aspect, what causes this overall effect? Homework? A workman unsmiling, one senses from his benign eye he longs for a smile. Or then this sensitive woman on her way to … the office? What’s uppermost in her world? The diversity of beings scarcely glance to the vineyard below. For many a topmost concern is cyclists, being hit by one at uppermost speed, and then what? That intense chap seems to be rehearsing his lecture to the cyclist before it happens. Or perhaps he’s walking off a hangover. Cyclists have no time for the vineyard, their mercurial helmets pointed at city destinations; neither for the brown river, antithesis of speed that today gives no impression of flowing. How to decipher the universe of the couple and their dog trudging unremittingly towards the Yarra Trail? Is that happy trudging? or some ultimate trial?, asks the second glance. Some stare at the ground. The bridge simply joins one world with another. All I can do is look at each person passing with an ancient wonder, as colours fall and currents get a slow move on. What thousand nights and a night could find voice from the aging woman going shopping, one step at a time? And what hell has that severe face stepped from, or is he just nervous about random cyclists who won’t change gears? Meanwhile, an angel is near at hand, cheered by autumn and brim with celestial information. Another one unawares is trying to find the weather updates on their phone, agitated habit of a lifetime. Why worry? Two friends of inquisitive mien discuss business in tranquil Vietnamese. I wonder where they are going: will their endeavours prove fruitful? A university student tries on the day, her knowledgeable face questioning the day moon. And why apartments? Another has his ear plugged to The National (I guess, expression-wise) on permanent loop. Composed, heads full of errands nod briskly towards each other’s humanity. Yellow signs declare pedestrian right-of-way but bridge walkers wait, playing out their crude etiquette, as more cyclists dash through. Crossing the bridge resumes again, all manner of walks, brisk and leisurely, between one world and another, their faces staying in the mind.

Kew

 

Turning out of the Monastery at 4 in the afternoon, I walk downhill towards the tram stop on the other side of the river. I let go of library plans and turn to thinking serendipitously. The air is fresh, there is a large blue sky, and the entire city skyline is visible beneath overhanging trees. Since the pedestrian bridge reopened in December, this is my preferred walk after work. The streets are quiet on this side of the Studley Park maze; someone is tending their native garden, a solitary van turns the corner to deliver its parcel. Houses above the river tell the history of Kew. Post-Federation deco residences stare out across Richmond. Mid-century apartments, called units in those days, are blocked in here and there. Architects’ dreams have replaced many of the foregoing, their abstract geometries of glass, steel, and timber a thrill to the eye behind bending eucalypts immeasurably high, peppercorns and jacarandas. ‘Yes’ posters are still affixed to certain picket fences. A Xavier boy rambles across the street and through a side gate. I wonder what it would be like to live in some of these homes. The footpath, uprooted and re-concreted in parts, leads me and my thoughts about random relevancies to the edge of the Park. I must watch for bicyclists, who will appear at intensive speed zipping downhill to the footbridge. Workmen have repainted the white line for left and right, but it is still every individual for themselves as our human world suddenly divides into the courteous and the get-out-of-my-way-I’m-coming-through. Signage leans to the courteous side. The greens and browns of grass and tree rise up on every side of my sight as I enter the walkway down to the bridge. I marvel at the view of countless units, which today are called apartments, clustering all along the bank on the Burnley side, obscuring the Skipping Girl neon. And against all expectation, along a long side of the hard meander of the Yarra, the Studley Park Vineyard comes bristling into view, waiting for the next flood, the closest vineyard to the city of Melbourne. The results may be purchased at Leo’s near Kew Junction at an interesting price; not, I reflect, a Doherty $20 special. The sun shines on the brown river as the sound underfoot changes from footpath to bridge planks and a bicycle does a marimba. A rowing eight slides below, the cox bleating repeats. I walk up to the jumbling sounds of tram and truck and traffic that is Victoria Street, knowing the next part of the day is now beginning. There are dinner ingredients to buy, a New Yorker article half-read, news to tap up on my phone, as I step onto the next tram with the rest of the human race: Myki rebels, intensities on laptops, a cat lady and her trolley, Vietnamese shoppers from Victoria Gardens, tradies in orange and yellow, a gaggle of Genazzano girls, druggies who don’t keep their thoughts to themselves, tourists in unknown languages …