City Cycle as part of Going Nowhere

A list of places for Dan to find in Melbourne.

Looking for the seat of government and the centre of power I started with a a tour of the Victorian Parliament. The first thing you do to enter the building is go through an x-ray security check, just like at the airport. The second thing they do is put a day glo yellow sticker on your chest with a huge T in the middle - no mistaking it, you are now a Tourist. The Victorian Statutes that sit on the floor of both houses of parliament have a globe with something orbiting around it. I don't know why... The opening of parliament each day must be a sight from the public galleries.

A Walk In The Park is as mundane as it sounds. A figure 8 traced from Federation Square, up through the Fitzroy gardens and then back. But, it immediately takes you to St Pauls (which I have never actually been into before today) and points out the Flinders statue. Flinders was the first person credited to circumnavigate the continent that became Australia (but he must've had some along for the ride, right?). The Conservatory in the Fitzroy Gardens was closed, but provided a great photo opportunity all the same. What are they conserving in there? Or are they promoting a set of values? The whole garden seemed to be in honour of the European settlers. Captain Cook, a model Tudor village and Sinclair's Cottage preserved for the guy who preserved the European landscape by remodelling and replanting all the European horticulture. By this stage the Republican in me is getting ticked off - this doesn't feel like the progressive Melbourne that I prefer to think of. Finishing the tour at Birrarung Marr does me no good either. It's windy and vacant. The Barak bridge audio highlights that he was at the signing of the "treaty" with Batman. The "treaty" was immediately refuted by the crown, you can't make a deal with people who don't exist and the land was officially terra nullis.

By now I'm finding the official version of history, with it's sunny side of life focus, incredibly patronising and irritating. I know better, but what about those who are here for a day and take this as the truth? The tour confronts me, a native Melbournian, with uncomfortable colonial truths exactly by it's desire to airbrush them clean.

I am officially over these self guided tours. I feel lonely and isolated from the city. Weirdly, taking all these tours alienates me from the city that I actually know really well. The official history is all about a past that is well beyond living memory. What about the Melbourne Festival Hub that was next to the boat houses in October? What about the 3x hourly boat journey's I was taking across the river in May? What about the Birdman Rally during Moomba even? Nope, the official version of history is all about times that are long gone...

In just 38 seconds I'm at the top of Eureka Tower - the view is familiar but completely surreal - I am seeing the map view of the world that I have been studying for the past few days. I can even guess where the 903 bus has carved out its orbit about 10km away. The busy cross roads of Flinders St Station, Federation Square, Young & Jacksons and St Pauls suddenly look so small and so devoid of human activity.

But, what would I do on holiday? I'd have a glass of the local thanks.

Today has had me thinking as much about cycles in time as in space. Writing over old routes Writing over old buildings Old boats Old stories

I am wondering about how to find the centre of a city in time Bristol received its royal charter in 1155 Meaning its middle right now is perhaps 1583 The year of the founding of Britain's first American colony (Melbourne's middle is 1923 the year of the building of the Hollywood sign)

But of course this is not true Because time stretches off ahead of us Indefinitely (all the while the Voyager probe pursuing it hopelessly  Like a dog chasing a car through some suburban street) And the middle is endlessly uncertain And whilst we think of time like a line We will remain decidedly lost.

I'm thinking about how much reading a map is like putting on a play Both attempts to navigate our way into through the present With a memory of the past.

I'm thinking about why we are never never envious of the future And I'm thinking about attempts to retrace our steps To return to where we started Or at least where we thought we started About history as a pattern of returns and revolutions Never just 'one fucking thing after another' as Alan Bennett joked It's my child's feet back in 1992 walking on the boards of the SS Great Britain Describing unknowing journeys to places I had never visited Anticipating my older feet's same journey Dancing with ghosts of the past and ghosts of the future Three generations of walkers navigating the same chain of corridors 

About maps as their own recycling of the city's geography A remembering and reciting of the city in paper and ink A locating of yourself amidst journeys taken and anticipated Three generations of walkers navigating the same chain of streets 

I'm wondering how we can place our bodies  In the path of the relentless forward march of history Like superman in front of a speeding train Or perhaps an anonymous figure in a white shirt  in front of a line of tanks Can we create new cycles Or circles Or returns Or revolutions Like a runner on their regular route Or a boat on its regular voyage Can we trace a route across old ground And in doing so see into the future  Can we fold three generations in on themselves Can we fold two cities together Separated by 10 thousand miles And 11 hours  Or two cities Separated by the 125 years It took the SS Great Britain To leave Bristol and return again.

From Wikipedia, on the SS Great Britain:

Antony Gibbs & Sons may only have intended to employ Great Britain to exploit a temporary demand for passenger service to the Australian gold fields following the discovery of gold in Australia in 1851,[36] but the ship was to find long-term employment on this route. For her new role,Great Britain was given a third refit. Her passenger accommodations were increased from 360 to 730, and her sail plan altered again, to a traditional three-masted, square-rigged pattern. She was also fitted with a removable propeller, which could be hauled up onto deck by means of chains in order to reduce drag when the vessel was operating under sail power alone.

In 1852, Great Britain made her first voyage to Melbourne, Australia, carrying 630 emigrants. She excited great interest there, with 4,000 people paying a shilling each to inspect her. She would continue to operate on the England–Australia route for almost thirty years, interrupted only by two relatively brief sojourns as a troopship—first during the Crimean War and later during the Indian Mutiny. Gradually, she came to earn a reputation for herself as the most reliable of the emigrant ships to Australia.

An 1862 source[who?] preserves some statistics of a typical trip during this period. The ship put out from Liverpool on 21 October 1861, carrying a crew of 143, 544 passengers (including the first English cricket team ever to visit Australia), a cow, 36 sheep, 140 pigs, 96 goats and a total of 1,114 chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. The journey to Melbourne (her ninth) occupied 64 days, during which the best day's run was 354 miles and the worst 108. With favourable winds the ship travelled under sail alone, the screw being withdrawn from the water. Three passengers died en route. The captain was John Gray, a Scot, who had held the post since before the Crimean War.

Although perhaps it's understandable considering the brief amount of time I've lived in the city, but the map excludes most of the places I know.

My house, in Easton, beyond the train station, on Washington Avenue which has very little to do with Washington, either George or DC.   

Most of my friends houses that spider off the edge of the map to the East, the South and the North.  

My Grandmother's house in Backwell, a village just outside Bristol, where we used to come at least twice a year, to Amberlands close, where a good friend of mine apparently used to buy her drugs as a teenager whilst I was probably playing with toy cars in my Grandparents front room.   

Cabot Circus. The enormous, incredibly chic new shopping centre beyond Broadmead, that already feels to me like it contains traces of the abandoned, outdated architectural folly it will become, like noticing the lines of your skull through your face, or what Robert Smithson called ruins in reverse - 'the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are build but rather rise into ruin before they are built.'

I'm also noticing the places on the map I don't think of as part of the Bristol I live in:

The prominence it gives to Clifton, which is still a place I occasionally used to visit, or that I remember from endless news stories a few Christmasses ago about a missing woman, and the numerous retracings of her journey that took place. Once as a police reconstruction and once for a morbid piece of voyeurism written for the Daily Mail. 

This is a memory of a run The run takes 19 minutes. This is a tracing over that run A circle over a circle This tracing takes 19 minutes.  

I leave the house  I am wearing shorts that once belonged to my brother a t-shirt that once belonged to my dad silver trainers headphones I hide my house keys behind some weeds protruding out of the path I check my phone for the time and to start the music playing I start running

Ducking through a pub tables on the dockside still at this stage self conscious Still prepared to believe I look ridiculous I look like a jogger and I hate joggers

My legs are getting used to the rhythm my ears are getting used to the music I am runnning along the dockside towards the centre of town I notice things in fractures the couple pushing a buggy The cranes on the dockside in the distance An unseasonal icecream van a faded laminated sign warning against the implementation of a new bus route on Bristols historic docks I can't remember if this sign was actually laminated I'm assuming it was I'm running along old railway tracks Occasionally you still see a steam train running on these tracks And there are boats to my right And a new maritime museum to my left I am running between the thin legs of dockside cranes I think briefly About half memories of this city when I used to visit as a child Empty warehouses and railways depots Fireworks on the dockside And my little brother didn't like the noise

I am running on railway tracks I am writing on tracks Knowing where I am going And trying to maintain the momentum Running is about just keeping going I can only run when I know where I'm going It's something about the feeling of being rails Of visualising where you will be A centrifugal force spinning you into the future I am visualising where I was And where I was going I am ten minutes in There is still water on my right And boats The SS Great Britain Renovated Drydocked I am leave the water temporarily Skipping on to a path that loops round on to a bridge I pass other runners going in the other direction And I contemplate the possibility of going in the other direction But I never do I run this way I know what the markers mean I know when I will hear which track I am driving myself round My fingers are getting tired I could just stop I think I could just stop But I won't

I run down a ramp The water is still on my right But now the sun is behind me And I can feel the idea of sweat on my back I'm passing a pub where my mother and my grandmother once took me for dinner Three generations caught in their own cycle Between cities And countryside And I remember us looking out the window and seeing the runners along the dockside And I think about thinking How much I wanted to be out there running And going to buy a pair of cheap silver trainers And now I know I'm heading home But my legs are slowing I'm following the path The rails have gone But the rails are still there People walk along here quietly Studying the water And the boats We pass The Matthew A recreation of pilgrim father's ship That traced its own finger Along a history that did not belong to it Sailing to the new world Blithely unaware of its old inhabitants I'm fifteen minutes in And I keep checking the clock in the corner of my computer To see where I am Which I never do when I'm running Because I know exactly where I am

And my favourite song comes on And It comes on as it always does Just at the right moment As the dockside opens up And I follow the gentle curve back towards The centre Or what I think of as the centre I'm kicking up my legs as best I can I am thinking about How satisfying this is How painful this is I like to run as fast as I can Not as far I notice things in fractures lamposts Cyclists I am skipping over bridges And running alongside Temporary walls around a building site Each printed with photographs from Bristol Harbour's industrial past Three generations Navigating their own way through history

I am now nearly there This is the most explicitly touristy area There are coffee places And I think an icecream parlour Though I've never stopped to check There are large new office buildings And apartments I am skipping again Down towards the Arnolfini A building renamed After a painting Two people holding hands And their reflections And a glimpse Of the author In the mirror  behind them But I can't reach the Arnolfini withou making one last Incomplete cycle Across the bridges That bandage the cuts in the dockside I am exhausted And I'm barely listening to the music any more I am navigating traffic lights And running over one last bridge And speeding up because I can see the end And I am sprinting Or doing the closest thing to sprinting I am running And it is starting to rain And I reach the start again

And stop

And check my phone

19 minutes

again

I am breathing heavily

In truth it is an incomplete circle I don't finish right back at the door Just before it

For some reason this feels important

Melbourne Visitor Shuttle: 90 minute round trip

City Circle Tram: 54 minute round trip

After two days of orbiting Melbourne, first from afar and now much closer, I'm starting to feel estranged from the city I live in. I see the city from behind glass, but the conversations I overhear are about Manchester or the voices speak a language that I don't understand at all.

I feel the distance covered, a distance between origin and destination and an alienating distance of time. I'm passive - I sit, look and listen but my only choice seems to be when I get off. I'm on the periphery of the city, physically and socially. Time to get off and be amongst the crowd...

I want to find some "centres of Melbourne" - I want to visit:

Immigration Museum

Parliament House

Captain Cook's Cottage

Hoddle's starting point

Government House / La Trobe's Cottage / Old Observatory

Koorie Heritage Trust

St Pauls / Flinders St Station / Young & Jackson

Melbourne's Parks: Treasury, Carlton, Flagstaff, Batman, Docklands, Birrarung Marr

Eureka Tower

Melbourne's Oldest Building

Melbourne Town Hall

Melbourne General Post Office

Ventura Orbiter around Melbourne: via the Frankston Line Train, 903 Bus, 1 Tram, 96 Tram, Werribee Line Train, 903 Bus, 1 Tram

Sunrise over Melbourne: 5:56am

Flinders St: dep 5:58am - AstronomyCast 183, 184

Mordialloc: arr 6:38am / dep 7:15am - AstronomyCast 185

Coburg: arr 9:48am - AstronomyCast 186, 187, 188, 189, 277

Lunch - Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Everything You Need to Know About Earth's Orbit and Climate Change, Astrophile: Lonely Planet Roams With Stellar Outcasts, 

3RRRFM: arr 12:00pm / dep 12:41pm - Listen to Dan Koop interview via Triple R On Demand

Flinders St: arr 1:14 / dep 1:32 - Science Friday NPR 20 May 2011, Voyager Golden Record Side A

Altona: arr 2:02pm / dep 2:45pm - Voyager Golden Record Side B, John Glenn Speech, John Glenn 50 Years Later

Coburg: 4:28pm / dep 4:36pm - The Copernican Revolution, The Continuing Copernican Revolution

Flinders St: arr 5:11pm

11 hours and 47 minutes to orbit Melbourne on a highly elliptical orbit around Flinders St Station.

Long enough to:

Drive from Melbourne VIC to Newcastle NSW

Fly from Melbourne AUS to Seoul KOR

For an analogue clock's hands to make a full rotation

For the Earth to make a 1/2 rotation

OBSERVATION

INSTRUMENTS / MEASUREMENTS

MATHEMATICS / CALCULATIONS

THEORIES

Things to follow up:

Sexagesimal numbers

Mapping of star maps, solar system and galaxy maps, ground maps, psycogeographic maps

Astronomy's relationship to time

Centres: Earth at the centre (Ptolemy), Sun at the centre (Copernicus), no centre (Hubble), planets that don't orbit anything at the centre (rogue planet)

The first orbits around Earth: Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2 with Laika, Vostok 1 with Yuri Gagarin

Large Hadron Collider

100km up is the boundary of space - what is the boundaries of Australia and the UK?

First day of development on City Cycle as part of Going Nowhere at Arts House: Dan Koop is in Melbourne AU, Andy Field is in Bristol UK, 11 hours and 17,073km apart. During the creative development neither of us will travel to meet each other, we'll purchase no new materials (second hand or recycled is okay) and we'll work up an idea for a new work that can travel without us getting on a plane or sending equipment either. Perhaps we'll present the work in a 3rd city altogether...

I started by visiting the Melbourne Visitor Centre in Federation Square and picking up maps and guides for tourists visiting Melbourne. These readily available printed collateral will be our materials. The sites surrounding also provide key Melbourne sites for exploration: the City Circle tram, the Melbourne Bike Share system and the Melbourne Visitor Shuttle. Even Eureka Tower rises above the iconic Flinders St dome from this angle.

Federation Square claims to be "Melbourne's meeting place" but perhaps this boast is for tourists? "Meet you under the clocks" at Flinders St is still a default meeting place for many Melbourne locals. But is this the centre of town? Both Fed Square and Flinders St Station sit on the "southern" border of Melbourne's city grid. Travel up Swanston St to City Square and were getting closer, even if this isn't a square at all - at least Melbourne Town Hall is directly across the road giving a sense of being near the seat of local power.

Bourke St is the (almost) west-east spine of Melbourne, with the pedestrian mall situated between busy Swanston & Elizabeth Sts. Here, we find the Melbourne Visitor Booth and helpful staff. Anyone can drop by and grab a tearaway black and white map of Melbourne. The Melbourne General Post Office (now a boutique shopping centre) stands in the background on the corner of Bourke & Elizabeth. All the highway signs leading into Melbourne measure the distance to the GPO, marking this as the "centre of town".

But Melbourne is expanding. Many times I've heard it said that "geographically, Melbourne is one of the largest cities in the world". I have no idea if that's true or not, but seeing as there are no mountains to stop the city growth I know there's something to the statement... It's like pancake batter that continues to ooze outwards from this centre. So if this really is the centre, what revolves around it?

The free City Circle tram carves out a boundary around the edge of the Melbourne CBD, now adding the Docklands to the west to it's route. What's inside this boundary and what's outside? Who's inside this boundary and who's outside? Who's in this city as a local and who's the visitor?