Spilling out of Flinders Street Station are an inordinate number of women in big hats. Huge, floppy black hats, finely detailed mauve hats. And men are dressed in fine pinstripe. “What’s going on?”, I ask the nearest behatted woman. “Oh nothing, it might rain.” I get the scoop from someone else. It’s Derby Day at the track. And Melbourne dresses up for the horse races.
Later, that evening, I’ll see the bedraggled remains of the day stagger away from
the station, talking too loud and too slurred, and flop into waiting cabs. But now
everyone looks fresh, sober and excited in the sunshine. I wander to the banks of the
Yarra River to where the street performers for the Melbourne Arts Festival are encamped.
An acrobat
soars skyward on a trampoline. A clutch of seaweed encrusted women play brass instruments.
The Melbourne Orchestra plays Bernstein on a barge. And two thinly clad, chalky white
actors perform Butoh to Japanese Taiko drum accompanyment.
Unusual for me, I’m not overwhelmed by the crowds. Perhaps I’ve been
inoculated by so much time in empty landscapes. I feel emotional and connected, my wires
are bare, I can sense gentleness, violence, sadness, joy, just from the air around me. The
orchestral music brings me to tears. I am moved and delighted by the performances, and I
feel well connected with the camera as I shoot through all this mass of people. 
Days later, I’m weary of the city and the crowds. That heady state of connection
with too many people is unsustainable, and I need solitude now. But for a time it was a
wonderful feeling of sensitivity. Cats would come up to me to be petted (a quality
Melbourne shares with Seattle). Children were approaching me unbidden, wherever I was. I
could sit in a pub for my dinner and just sense who in the room was happy, who was
depressed, who was in love, who I should avoid at all costs. Now, I am creatively shut
down, I don’t take my camera out until mid afternoon. The tram rides are endless,
from one end of the city to the other as I pursue my tasks. I want to leave town now, get
out. I book a car for tomorrow, cancel my hostel, write off seeing the spectacle of the
Melbourne Cup. 
I couldn’t imagine being around such a crowd for the 5 or 6 hours until
race time. Any pub in the country, about 2 in the afternoon, will do I think. I enter
Fitzroy Garden. I sit and take in the green, and the trees. And solitary people walking.
No crowds. No tram rumble. I started seeing again. The light becomes wonderful. I’m
happy again, and I didn’t know I was less than happy, I thought I was just weary and
a bit worried that I’m such a change junkie that 3 days in the same place closes me
up.
Yesterday I took a tour of the famous Penguin Parade on Phillip Island. A diminutive
flightless bird,the Little Penguins ever so tentatively make their way to the shore at
dusk, scurrying back into the water at the slightest provocation, such as a gull flying
nearby. Darkness allows greater boldness and in groups of 10 to 20 to 30 they waddle
ashore and into the heath. Once there they raise a passionate, weird cry and wail, which
is the memory I’ll take away from the place. Small groups of tiny, tentative
darlingly cute penguins waddling along well worn paths, as though bewildered and lost, and
the darkness filled with their cries and greeting screams and courtship cackles. 
My trip leader, I think, is the reason I became shut down. I had to build a wall against his frustration with his lot in life and his racist comments, spoken non too softly even with Asians on the bus. He bonded with me, alas, because I was a birder, and he pronounced himself one of the top listers in the country. He was insecure, felt entitled and thwarted, and was quick to blame. I see a hint of how the constant undercurrent of Australian racism is perpetrated, I suppose I’d be insecure too in the face of superior immigrant energy. I have stereotypes too, but toward Asians they’re largely positive stereotypes. Before I left the hostel I gave my tram ticket to a Japanese man staying there. Today he thanked me profusely, in very broken English. The Japanese men I’ve seen this trip have uniformly been shy, retiring, and really grateful for any contact and acknowledgment. I’m fond of them, and kinda want to take care of them. The Japanese women are more outgoing, less reticent. And the Chinese woman from Hong Kong on the trip, very bright, assertive, a lot of spark in her eyes. We talked about the takeover, that she plans to stay, how the territory needs her generation to stay.
Melbourne itself is a city of immigrants. It has the largest Greek population outside
of Greece. The meat and produce stands at Victoria Market are run by Vietnamese, Iranians,
Chinese. Young African men gather in groups on the street corners, the accent is French
and the eye contact with me is friendly. Even in Melbourne, that easy, eager, inquisitive
Australian character comes through. A man walking home with his groceries catches up to me
as asks where I’m from. “Seattle—great music town” I managed to avoid
a wry retort about how some of us just die for it. 
Back to Fitzroy Garden. I found the “Faerie Tree”, which was a wonderful bas
relief and painted montage of faeries and kookaburras and good witches and spiders and
fungi. A little boy came up. “Wonderful, isn’t it” I said. “It’s
scary,” he replied. It was done in the 30’s by a locally famous children’s
author and artist. The park is filled with secret gardens and water sculptures. Melbourne
itself is filled with fountains from all eras, Victorian to Modern to Retro-Folk Post
Modern. I then walked the streets of Fitzroy itself, a funky, alternative yet
Victorian-preservationist neighborhood. Great grillwork. Terrific terra cotta. Tomorrow I
leave the city.
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