Melbourne Bound

The freight train yard, with long metallic carriages covered in fluorescent graffiti, sits just outside of Geelong on the way back to Melbourne.  Below a billboard that promotes a way of life, once common, now exclusively for the wealthy: Pivot heaters, displayed dangling above the Geelong highway, are wood fired heaters best suited to replace your television infront of your red furry rug and polished floorboards.  These rusty freight carriages that I have seen loitering at South Geelong station and various other locations, carry our needs in excruciatingly straight lines laid by fairly payed labourers over the years, are a photographers wet dream.  I can see, in my imagination of course, some young students, wearing this bizarre ‘cape’ I saw on ASOS.com that was seeling for 250 dollars, holding cameras that they bought for 2500 dollars, with an education they were given for 25000 dollars, taking photos on one knee that they will sell for very little.  But, Art is priceless.  The gravel hurts their knees, but art is priceless, sacrifices must be made.  They mix with the focus to highlight the various ‘tags’ on the train sides.  Ex-Geelong youths, the opposite of these photographers, once expressed them selves on an outdated fleet of freight trains, and now drive their kids back to Geelong.  They didn’t know then what I know now; I read on the back of a truck “Trucks keep Australia moving”.  They kids, experimenting in their medium, with the You Yang hills in the background creating a natural landscape.  However, it is not the different colours of the tags or the different designs, it isn’t the weeds growing between the dilapidated tracks or the rust on the iron wheels of the freighters, it isn’t the class related suggestions of a working class upbringing and way of life that is being destroyed through outsourcing and internet fashion, but rather, it is the aging of the tags and trains themselves.  The evidence of time that reads like a lazy poem.  The paint fades over time.  The metal rusts over time.  The artists fall away over time, replaced by a blossoming group of boring and successful citizens. 



I drive further toward Geelong and the image of the freight yard fades.  I imagine these kids sitting on one of the rails smoking a cigarette and in love.  They talk up the upcoming sunset to each other.  Their photos will look ‘more’ in a few hours.  One of the students will break the trend and take close  ups of the freighters.  She will attempt to catch the weeds and the rust and the wheels in the one shot.  She will be aware of the bifold reasons for her efforts: art is both therapudic in the short-term and a means of expression in the long run.  As the sunset approaches they survey the area and look for good vantage shots that wernt appropriate in the day.  As the sun sets behind the You Yang hills in the west, they will try to catch the manmade carnage of development and the serenity of uninterrupted nature of the hills in the one shot.  They will compliment eachother on the poignancy of such shots.  From the Pivot heaters billboard that stands above them and the busy highway in the immediate east.  You cant help but see their excitement and youthful animation.  They walk around with their chins up and their eyes fixed on distances not visible.  They are unaware that they are taking photos of yesterdays youth, of yesterdays artists and yesterdays explorers.  They are unaware that in ten to fifteen years, the next generation will take photos of their remains, of their colourful excrement left on the sides of buildings and the backrooms of Brunswick galleries.  They are unaware that soon, sooner than they think, rust and tall weeds will cover their faces and grow from their beltlines.  Long green untrimmed pubic hairs sported by people who stopped caring about not caring; who,



I am yet to return to this piece.  I would like to turn it into a 2 -3 thousand word story.