My Home, My Town

Glorious Melbourne! She is a fickle woman with multiple personalities, multiple moods, multiple smiles for her multiple lovers. Turn a corner and you're in a new world, new culture - even the weather seems different and, being a Melburnian, we give, we change along with her, knowingly.

I work on Spring Street at the top Eastern end of Melbourne. The 'Paris' end of Melbourne, as we know it. Here, the shops are spaced out and seems less congested or are the streets just wider? Parliament House looks authoritatively down Bourke Street and sideways on Spring Street, laying out before it like a smorgasbord platter. The trams come and go, unknowingly and unaware of the people, the traffic - it has it's course and it comes and goes and rarely looks up to see if anything has changed.

At the top end of Bourke Street are two famous restaurants that are famous gathering places and haunts of the Melbourne Mafia or Underworld - "top notch posh" restaurants coincidentally also frequented by politicians, celebrities, who's who. One world trying to slink in and out in anonymity, the other sitting on tables on the sidewalk, hoping they'll be recognised and their egos inflated for yet another day.

As you walk by, the tone moves from public service to a more cosmopolitan al fresco air, where you know you can get anything if you knew who to ask. A part of you wonders if today's the day you'll hear the rat-a-tat-tat of a machinegun firing off from the rear window of a black Mercedes as it drives by, taking the target and you, unpreparedly, to a darker place where there's silence. As you walk by and hear the swish of a breeze ruffling through the oak trees lining Bourke Street, you realise that you'll live another day and that, probably somewhere down Lygon Street in Carlton, the reverie is being lived out for real and you'll watch it in horror on the 6 o'clock news tonight, safe at home.

You walk past the construction workers, packing up for the day. They briefly look up, hoping you're a taut secretary with the highest heels that tighten your calf muscles and, sadly, look back down again because you're wearing your sneakers with your corporate suit and haven't delivered one of the few special treats for them, working in the city.

You straighten up your backpack and walk briskly past them, towards JB HiFi, denying the temptation to meander in and just see. Nobody just meanders into JB to just see.... you know that the minute you're within coo-ee of the big distinctive yellow doors, you know you're walking back out with a CD or DVD you're not sure you really wanted but was too cheap to leave languishing amongst all the other outdated CDs and DVDs. But not today. Today, Melbourne's warm summer has got you magnetised to the pavement because that's where the most sunshine is right now.

You turn into Swanston Street, heading towards Flinders Street Station, and into a row of cheap Asian clothes stores. The type of stores that young teenagers with their first pay packet race into, to buy copies of originals from Myer and David Jones that they can't afford just yet. You smell the acrid odour of the horse and carriages sweat and pooh, waiting for tourists to buy a clip-clop trip around the CBD. you know why they call it the 'Paris end' where you've just come from....because this doesn't smell like the parts of Paris you've visited. This smells of the toil and sweat of hard-working people, cracking nails and breaking backs to make a living to pay for that little plot of soil and bricks and mortar they call home.

In the distance, you see the famous 'M' of MacDonalds, Macca's and Hungry Jacks looming in the distance and, a smirk of pride that you are not one bit tempted because this is not your kind of food. They don't sell vegetarian sushi and wholemeal tandoori wraps or spicy lentil soup with coriander and fresh crusty bread rolls. They don't sell rich hazelnut and dark Italian chocolate tarts in delicate yet rich buttery pastry shells. No, this isn't where you buy Vietnamese salads or Teri Yaki rice paper rolls or, God forbid, organic Sri Lankan chicken curry with rice and Fijian water so it's with pure safety that you walk on by.

St. Patrick's stands in all it's newly scrubbed and renovated majesty. Then you see the worst thing - drug dealers and homeboys, sprawling on the lawns of St. Pat's with their hooded jackets, headbands and sunglasses, gesturing fingers flailing their own language to each other. It's hard to say if they're going to stab someone or whether they're going to hug them....or both. The steps of St. Pat's is defiled with the city's vermin, tarnished with the reality of life while a solitary figure in the background, waves a Bible in his hand and preaches to no-one in particular. No-one's listening andhe knows it. Yet this is his message or maybe his penance and he progresses unwavingly...........and there is Flinders Street Station.

The iconic ambience of the station is temporarily set aside for now because it is has to perform its daily duty of shuttling commuters to and fro......train in.......train out....train in......train out.....train cancelled.....train in.....train out.....train cancelled.....train late.....to their homes, where they flop on their couches and exhale.