Creative Non-Fiction – Colins Street

June saw Melbourne achieve joint 8th place on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index. This was a markedly reduced ranking for mighty Melbourne, which had for many years claimed a seemingly perpetual spot near the very top; frequently first, or at least, second of the most livable cities in the world.

Undoubtedly driven by the ongoing pandemic, many great cities have seen a change of fortune. Former European greats like Vienna [12] have faltered in the rankings while essentially covid-free Auckland [1] has now triumphed at the top of the table. No less than four Australian cities have made it into the top 10, with Adelaide [3] and Perth [6] faring strongly. Brisbane [10] also made the cut, and it can only be the scantest of consolations to Melbournians, that their traditional rival Sydney [11] has just missed out of a place at the top table. For better and for worse, many renowned cities have risen, and many have fallen across the globe.

Such change reminds us that great cities, just like great people, are subject to the ever-fickle churn of fortune; rising and falling within the perpetual motion of chance, circumstance, and human endeavor. It was ever thus, and as the father of western history himself observed, from his vantage in the 5th century BCE:

“… I shall go forward with my history, describing equally the greater and the lesser cities. For the cities which were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant; and such as those that are at present powerful, were weak in the times of old.” [Herodotus, Histories. Book 1.5]

In historical terms, we don’t have to go back that far to view a different Melbourne altogether. One that proudly celebrated itself as the ‘Seventh City of the British Empire’. The iconic 1930’s poster of Percy Trompf, for the Australian National Travel Association, showcasing the Manchester Unity Building, as a poster-icon of confident Australian identity, and an enduring classic of travel advertising.

Look back again further and another chapter in Melbourne’s fortune emerges when the largely unbuilt settlement exploded exponentially in size, following the boom of the 1850’s gold rush. Melbourne simply could not grow fast enough, and for a time it seemed the whole world flocked to Victoria’s booming city.

So does the lens of history, constantly focus and re-focus on the fortunes of a metropolis. Time changes many aspects in the circumstance, of nations, peoples, and their cities. Yet, no metropolis – no Athens, no Sparta, no Melbourne, no Auckland – has ever seen the end of flux or the ever-changing nature of fortune. Those that rise now will fall in time, and those that are laid low, have the potential to rise anew.

As a Melbournite, resident, and lover of the city, it’s been hard to miss the scarring effect that four significant covid lockdowns have had on Melbourne. However, knowing the spirit and character of this great city, can any doubt that Melbourne will, rise again.

In a city conspicuous for it’s high-rise modernity of glass and steel, the man found the old surgery tucked away, low down in gloom, a time capsule of the past, partially forgotten, or so it seemed.

Hidden in a non-descript, concrete building, the surgery was a stagnant box of stale air and synthetic light. Everything was in stasis, dated to the past. The room had probably felt modern back in the 70’s. It had never since, left that time.

Old, sickly ceiling tiles floated above faded, tired carpet, dragging magnolia walls inward to seal an airless box. Brittle plastic diffusers emitted jaundiced light, sapping life and energy. The room induced feelings of ill-health. It co-opted all but the hardiest into the prerequisite conditions necessary to see the doctor. Time itself grew sickly in that room. A small consolation, if there were one, were that germs themselves might conceivably shun such a bleak environment. The man had visions of bacteria, crawling for the door.

On the waiting-room wall hung a tired print of Monet’s fog-bleary outline of the Houses of Parliament in London. It had taken the man until his third visit to place the famous image. Age and time had rendered the masterpiece so faded as to be almost indiscernible. The fog of London’s Thames made hazier still by the long slow passage of time. ‘Surgery time’.

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In the flesh the Receptionist had warmed up somewhat, employing a business-like formality for the opening engagement.

The man did not know it, but over subsequent visits he learned that like the fluctuating four seasons of Melbourne’s weather, the Receptionist was capable of rapid change. She could exhibit hot and cold spells with everything in between. A frosty chastisement for not filling out a form, or following ‘The System’, could quickly give way to a warm front of genuine affection; a favoured patient, blowing-in mid-gust, to disrupt the prevailing front. In those warmer moments, the Receptionist looked almost youthful, a glimpse of her younger self, showing a kindness and vitality now diminished by years. The summers of our past being almost always more radiant than those of the present.

She existed purely in the physical realm and no computer or smartphone was her dominion. Rather the index-system was mistress here and she a slave to it. Fingering through narrow trays of well-thumbed, yellowing cards, it was conceivable that some represented long-perished souls. When not filing, the Receptionist fielded intermittent calls via the large button telephone, while perpetually ordering the disordered files, that littered the desk.

Behind that desk and without any notion or irony, hung a faded classic, Turner’s iconic ‘The Fighting Temeraire’. The noble sail-ship the Temeraire, the proud glory of her day, ignominiously towed to oblivion by the modernity of a mechanical steamer. Progress held at bay, but never in the end defied.

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It did not take long to realise that the surgery induced a clientele that could, conservatively, be described as mature. In all his visits he did not remember seeing anyone who looked below the age of 60 , with most being far older.

On his first visit the man had been accosted, warmly, by a gentlemen whom he affectionately named ‘The Ambassador’. A jolly, eccentric, of the old School, who was keen to talk and reminisce about travels in past times and past places. Oblivious to the single sided nature of the conversation, it had resulted in the production of a calling card, the Ambassador extending an invitation: the man warmly invited to call at a later date, “at a time favourable to both parties”.

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Category: Creative Non-Fiction

The Surgery