Bobby Gatto moves to Brunswick

One day Bobby Gatto came to live with me again. Bobby is my cat. He had been living with my daughter and her two gigantic dogs so his life was not always peaceful. However I was anxious that he might not adapt to the urban environment, having been a suburban cat who lords over vast expanses of gardens and peaceful neighbourhood streets.

I was wrong. 

Hope Street bus service

The old man walked tentatively towards the speaker. He held his walking stick aloft, to gain attention, but it looked as if he was advancing to attack, albeit in slow motion.

It was a beautiful spring afternoon and the speakers had been addressing the gathering about the impending closure of the Hope Street bus, Route 509. They talked about how the bus line serves the community, how essential it is, linking two major roads, the railway line, the medical, sporting, shopping and other public facilities. The densely populated area, is set to become even more densely populated with more high rise development. The area needs not more cars, it needs the bus service. For the elderly, the bus is an essential service, and the drivers are their friends.

One of the speakers, a retired bus driver, guided the old man to the centre of the circle. The MC, local resident Shane, introduced him as Joe, a man who has lived in the area for all of his 91 years.

The light in winter: Mirabella

It has been a long winter in Melbourne this year, and even though we are almost at the end of August, the blossom month, it still feels like winter. “It’s a miserable day” is Vince’s assessment of the climate, both meteorological and psychological. But then again, he lived for many years in the tropics.

I like to look for bright spots even in the darkest days.  The many varieties of wattle blaze their beautiful yellow in gardens, reserves, parks and along the Eastern Freeway as I drive to work every day.. Surely the great spirits of nature fashioned them so as to counteract the greyness of Melbourne.

And then, there is Mirabella.

Who is Emily George?

There is a little street off Lygon Street in East Brunswick and off this street there is a little lane. A little dilapidated sign indicates it is called Emily George Lane. It is a picturesque laneway, not that I have walked down to the end yet. The sign is affixed to an old Victorian terrace house, painted a bright yellow. On the other side of the laneway entrance is a brick wall with a large array of street art.

Autumn in Brunswick

 Yin and Yang. The black bluestone blocks of the kerb and the paperthin leaves coming to rest, piling up in ever shifting mounds on the streetside. The blocks hewn once and for all from deep gorges in the ground along the banks of Merri Creek, the leaves only one season old and already cast adrift.

This afternoon the radio played “Autumn Leaves” sung by Nat King Cole. As I drove home I thought of songs and poetry inspired by autumn. Although yesterday was the first of May , when spring explodes in Europe (Karel Hynek Macha’s famous lines always linger in my mind when this day comes along or when I hear the date said: Byl prvni Maj, byl lasky cas –the first of May, the time of love… ), here in the southern hemisphere it is the time of the shortening days, the oblique rays, the melancholy shadows and timid light.

Even my students, compelled to learn poems about the heavy fruits, the dying leaves and the clattering of the flags, must have got an insight... perhaps.

Blak Dot Gallery

A few months ago I was showing Olga some of my favourite places on Lygon Street East Brunswick.  We had not seen each other for some time and were talking non-stop, catching up with news of our families. Olga was telling me about her daughter in law who was considering doing post-graduate work on the relationship between members of the indigenous community in Melbourne and very recently arrived immigrants. And then a strange thing happened....

Rear Window

I recently watched this Alfred Hitchcock movie on afternoon television. Of course the highlight was Grace Kelly’s dresses, including her very 1950s negligee (who remembers the crucial line in adult movies when the lady says to the male visitor “let me just slip into something more comfortable”), but what amazed me even more was the very idea of apartment windows opening onto an interior courtyard.