The Bolte Bridge stands watch over the city, casting its cool blue beams of light into the sky, and rippling across the Harbour…
(Sharon’s interpretation of the Bolte Bridge is on her blog here.)
icons
Melbourne 365: Day 353
The Melbourne Star is another recent addition to the Melbourne skyline. It started a few years ago but only operated for a couple of days before needing extensive re-engineering. Now it’s all fine, and offers unique views of the city and the somewhat more distant mountain ranges surrounding the city.
At night it lights up, and the colours dance and pulse across the steel beams like permanent fireworks. That’s quite a show, but I was interested in the way you can glimpse it, peering around corners and between buildings all around Docklands. There’s something of the Panopticon about it, in that while I can never be sure if there’s someone in each of those air-conditioned gondolas, I just assume that there is, catching these same glimpses of life between the steel and concrete…
(Sharon’s very evocative interpretation of the Melbourne Star is on her blog here.)
Melbourne 365: Day 352
Today is the turn of Federation Square (or Fed Square as it’s known locally)… a fairly recent addition to Melbourne’s collection of quirky architecture, having only been around for about 14 years now, but in that time it’s served its intended purpose of providing a meeting place, an event space, a controversial, highly fragmented, highly geographical construction theme, and it’s hard to imagine Melbourne without it.
This particular view is of The Atrium, an interesting space between spaces, that shows off some of the immense web of steel that is a recurring design element across the buildings of the Square. I’m sure there is repetition in the pattern somewhere, but it’s beyond my powers of observation to find it!
(Sharon’s interpretation of Fed Square is on her blog here.)
Melbourne 365: Day 351
Melbourne is known for its network of laneways, each of which seems to house some hidden treasures, ranging from tiny galleries and bars, through to cafes and coffee places of every cultural persuasion. People gather, pressed together like sardines sometimes, and they eat, drink, talk, laugh, and every other thing.
Mostly though, they eat…
(Sharon’s interpretation of the laneways of Melbourne is on her blog here.)
Melbourne 365: Day 350
As far as rivers go, the Yarra is quite distinctive, at least as far as the fact that it is almost impossible to see through, and has even been described as running upside down, with the mud on top and the water underneath. So I felt quite pleased, to see that despite this spurious composition, it functions perfectly well insofar as seeing across the river, showing the unique character of the Melbourne skyline, its silhouette like a fingerprint on the horizon from miles away. In fact, we felt the river was so distinctive that it could be described as a Melbourne icon, and is the second in that series.
(Sharon’s interpretation of the Yarra River is on her blog here.)
Melbourne 365: Day 349
We are on the home run now… just under 20 days to go. My wife Sharon had a great idea to see us to the end of this project – finish with a series of images of things that are quintessentially… Melbourne. Icons, if you will.
So our first is the Royal Exhibition Building, nestled right in the middle of Carlton Gardens, still being used almost daily, having stood for almost 140 years (I know in some countries that’s almost like yesterday, but in the timespan of European colonisation in Australia, it’s actually kind of a big deal). I’m going to try to find my own spin on each icon, to find my own way of seeing it. Today, I’m thinking that our future always reflects where we’ve been – we build in the shadows of what came before. Our dreams for tomorrow reflect our ambitions of yesterday.
(By the way, I’ve asked Sharon – who is an outstanding photographer, if you didn’t already know – to also take part in this ‘icons’ series… so head over to her blog to check out her view of each scene. Two views photography lives again!)
Timothy Moss 