15/04/2022 The Spaces in Between: Melbourne

I left my bike in Adelaide, figuring it wasn't worth hauling it over to Melbourne for a paltry 10 days.

"You can use my bike!" said the home owner before they left.  "I've not used it in a while, but I put the pump out so you can pump up the tyres."

To my pleasant surprise, the home owner's bike was a Very Nice Bike, so I pumped up the tyres and off I went, much to the disgust of the dog who was left behind to suffer from canine IKIMO. 

Riding the bike introduced me to the spaces in between all the other bits of the city.  Suburbs that, from a car, looked like bicycling would be a daunting dance with death on a dangerous highway became instead corridors of green as I followed all the spaces behind and in between the suburbs.

I rode for km between the roadway and the train;

along the quiet pathways that linked the parks;

between the highway and the sound-proof fence (OK, I'll admit that this bit wasn't too grandly exciting, but it was nice not to be on the road);

behind the houses, along the creek;

between the sea and the city;

and all the way out to the mouth of the Yarra, where I took in the views of the city and listened to the wind sing and wail between the metal blades of the lookout.

Compared to my lumbering heavy-duty touring bicycle, the home owner's bike was light and fast and would have been perfect except that it had an annoying squeak in the front hub, not unlike a cross between a seagull and a kitten.  I got a little over-excited on the light, fast bike and, notwithstanding the seagull/kitten issue, went perhaps a little further than I originally intended.

I rode past the Westgate bridge and the punt over the river.  The punt is there just for pedestrians and bicycles, because when the Westgate bridge was built it made provision for neither of these.  Whether this was by design or oversight I do not know, but catching the punt across the river is now on my ever-growing must-do list.

I rode into the city along the Yarra;

and through the city.  It was very pretty. 'Between' here was really all about dodging between pedestrians.

I found autumn leaves in an alley beside the railway line;

 a crumbling mansion, also beside the railway line;

jaunted along the Djeering Trail beside (you guessed it!) the train line;

 

 

and home I went between the golf courses.  Because there are far too many golf courses in this corner of Melbourne - the Metropolitan, Huntingdale, Commonwealth, and Yarra Yarra are all within walking distance.  It's a shame I don't play golf, because then I would have an excuse to ride my bicycle along all the little tracks within the golf course. 

The dog had paroxysms of happiness when I came home, such that I felt guilty and had to take him for a walk.  This was quite an effort, as I had just ridden 62km on an unfamiliar (although light and fast) bike on a seat I wasn't used to.  However while I was walking the dog I didn't have to sit on my tender sit-me-down-bones and I didn't have a seagull/kitten boring holes in my brain either, so walking was really quite a relaxing way to end the day.