Early start for me this morning, I managed to leave the house by ! I truly am not one of the world’s early risers at the moment. Saw my first Melbourne frost for the year along the railway reservation, 7 °C as a I arrived at Monash with blue and stiff fingers. Then I found the 75 Degrees South blog. Currently -28.5 °C down at Halley base in the Antarctic!
Evening ride in to the city, something I probably haven’t done since last October when we moved to Oakleigh! The idea was to meet Jo at Pivotal Galleries in Richmond at 5.30 pm, the scary thing was that for a block or two on the way in I found I was completely blank and couldn’t remember which roads and bike tracks I used! Equally astounding was how quickly things change when you don’t visit an area, the constant flux of buildings being built, changing hands, changing business, being bulldozed, see it everyday and it stays familiar, ignore it for a month or two and it is suddenly all very new and different.
The purpose of the trip was to visit the Richmond 3121 exhibition, works by Anthony Figallo and Daniel Moynihan, and an exhibition that we’d read about in the newspaper. I think I was expecting more of a photography exhibition, less of the drawings inspired by Richmond, but the whole thing was fascinating — the use of the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) as an emblem for Richmond (Tigers) I thought whimsical and entertaining. Naggingly, many of the places I could half-remember, or thought I’d seen, but none seemed to be fully described, leaving me wondering if I really had, or if I’d just been past so many places so very similar…
Stopping in for a drink turned into an hour or two and dinner in front of the fire, me in bike riding gear, Jo in her work clothes, the other patrons dressed up in their Friday-night finest. Both of us a little nostalgic and homesick to live in Richmond — maybe one day we’ll move back here. Gropius serves good food, but I still miss Ian and Via Ponté — it was only on this spot for around a year, but they quickly became a firm favourite.
The ride home was thoroughly enjoyable, a cruise along the bike tracks in the cold foggy night air, only faintly lit by the nearly full moon’s light — something I haven’t done for a long time, and vastly different to riding around during the day. Everything looks very different with the mist rising off the river and the sports grounds, feeling the temperature difference in the dips and rises of the track.
