File pix: The Yarra river in Melbourne (/EPA)
So I've moved again, for the sixth time in seven years since first arriving in Melbourne. This time I'm back from butchering Mandarin in Beijing and a longitudinal circumnavigation of the globe; a little wearier, a lot poorer, hopefully a bit less silly. I missed this city, and the Yarra, the river that loosely divides it into cunningly named preserves of North and South. The former likes to pretend there is some sort of pioneer spirit attached to gentrification; the latter is comfortable in a kingdom of wide, leafy streets. Countless, equally reductive stories have been written exploring this dichotomy, and every time I see one I think it's a good thing that newspapers are dying.
Still, having moved from up to down, I find I miss the former. The hub near which I lived was brimming with activity, so full that it occasionally slopped over into violence; older residents would turn the name of Coburg into Jo'burg, because generalisations are quick and easy. And to turn to the old Australian shorthand of food as the most palatable form of multiculturalism, Coburg was marvellous - restaurants everywhere, Chinese and Lebanese and Egyptian and Indian. It is difficult to protest immigration policy on a full belly.
Armadale, in the south-east, is quite different. The three closest establishments to me dispense antiques and paintings, a rather different sort of sustenance. It is one of Melbourne's most liveable suburbs, according to a lavishly produced magazine article that comes out each year and dominates conversation in the correct coffee shops, and it wears this title like a fur-lined tiara. I don't feel like I belong. I walk to the market and imagine property prices plummeting in my wake. I am not used to single-handedly increasing the diversity of a suburb.
But there is one thing about living south-side I very much enjoy. My route to work is via a circuitous track that is used for the annual Formula One Grand Prix, and once a year it reverberates with growling
engines and grumbling residents. The track wraps around the Albert Park lake, which is home to a sizable population of black swans. They are as curious as they are beautiful, a delicious inky inversion of
the snowy purity you might expect. I like this almost as much as I enjoy their propensity to terrorise tourists bearing picnic baskets. I like that they are nomadic creatures, moving erratically from habitat
to habitat. I can identify.
Most of all, however, I like the moments when a swan, or a family of swans, will cross the road separating the lake from the grasslands around it. One will go first, extending an exploratory bill into incoming traffic. The cars will stop, a stagnant river of red lights. The swans then cross, one by one, in no particular hurry. One or two will stretch those long necks, surveying their surveyors, before resuming their ungainly passage. On land, the swans waddle and roll, but even in this state they are stately - and all the watching eyes,
all the glaring headlights, do nothing to disprove the notion that dignity does not have to be elegant. This is their lake, their road, and the rest of us are just passing through.
> The views expressed are entirely the writer's own
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