Echoes In A Shallow Bay

Weekends are for exploring. Whenever I have some spare time on a weekend I like to choose a part of Melbourne I'm unfamiliar with and see what I can find. Obviously, public transport is the best way of making the trip. Public transport routes are the veins of a city. Its elemental components will always be found along (and on) them. Aside from this, an intimate knowledge of a city's public transport network is an essential aspect to one's survival. You never know when you will need to get a train, bus or tram outside the usual routes you use, and as my mother always says "it is better to be safe than sorry". So today I decided to get the train over to Williamstown.

Williamstown was one of the earliest European settlements around Melbourne and Nelson Place strip maintains a quaint Victorian era charm and several of the business are self-described as shoppes.


Unfortunately, it seems that attitudes in the area are of a similar vintage to the architecture.


Whilst strolling along Nelson Place, attempting to make my Welsh roots as inconspicuous as possible, I noticed a shipping tanker making its way out through the bay and decided to take a stroll down the pier to get a closer look. Back in my mid-teens my father organised for himself and I to jump a shipping tanker to Tasmania. One reason for this could have been that he was too cheap to pay for the airfares, but the more likely reason was that he thought the first hand experience of some real men at work might be a decent shot in the arm for my waning masculinity. It wasn't particularly successful, however it did begin a bit of a fascination with shipping tankers for me. For a long period in the late-nineties I was convinced that jumping a tanker was a serious option for escape from my then isolated existence. The months alone at sea wasn't too far removed from how I was living at the time, and the thought of all the exotic ports to dock had a certain romanticism to it. Of course, the soul destroying menial tasks and undoubtedly inedible food was never factored into the fantasy, but reality should never get in the way of youthful dreams.