And
then again, and then, again, South Yarra, again. Beep beep beep. Gateway to the
South, in a riverside city where every station is a gateway to the south. Where
every stop is an exit from, or an entrance to the south, then, and then, again.
The South of Birrarung, its way bending deeply in the earth, from the smooth oval-stone
cascades of Warrandyte and floodplains of Warringal, past tree-swaying suburbs
and ancient rock pulpits, a shuffling then sliding brown-white water, broad past
the emptied billabongs of Melbourne High School, the phased-out factories of
Cremorne, towards the big Bay, there to translate again into grey-blue blue-grey
when Birrarung meets salt. South south of the island continent, this vast
epitome of south, as the dead language would have it in an age when Australis
was notional, a crowd of clouds cracking cheeks; this disproportionate immensity
of south, that the eye still guesses at beyond available horizons; this
unclassifiable catalogue of climates, seven seasons in one year, four in one
day alone where Birrarung drifts and dawdles its load that fell torrential in
freezing catchments above; this tenacious grip born out of firestorms,
implacably reaching out again its ways in wordless complexity. South of the
Equator, unmindful as the Equator is to cold mists on languid riverbends, or
the kind of rain that will turn to ice at the first opportunity. South of the
uptop hemisphere, origin of harnessed electricity, train horsepower, and
ringing steel roads, its expansive propulsion turned grotesque with
Enlightenment setting out curving grids of ironic tracks to compete with
latitudes and longitudes on its, uptop’s, latest map. South of the Moon, as it
were, again then, always where the Moon is looked up at, as if from a vantage
south, round even when half-round or quarter-round, on occasion sparkling even
like sunlight on water, though often like sunlight through mist, like sunlight
upon a pool, sunlight being all that is seen of the Moon this far south, and so
distant that train travel there and back is unimaginable. Then, and again then,
South Yarra, that forests of toaster-rack apartments have turned into a wind
tunnel, that hungry transport has turned into a warren of underground concrete
caves, that time itself has turned into an ideal perpetual jogging track, a
self-perpetuating traffic bank-up where satellite idols lose track green amber
red red and amber and back to green, an overpriced idyll for Jaded Bayside
Commuters (JBC) and idle poolsiders on their way back to Trak. Beep beep thud.
