RICHMOND time COLLAGE

School uniform up against white weatherboard fence
A brown car parked on white concrete by brown brick flats
Berry Street still as it originally was – a slum

Four sunken houses in black and white
A vietnamese newspaper folded out
Hairdressing salon – black and white linoleum squares
Richmond rockers stand outside with skulls on their belt buckles
pushing a panel van into a pink mulberry bush
An old greek warrior lies wounded in a goal square
painted on the road
A slum mum’s rusty tap still vibrating

Down by the river at the butchers picnic
A Chinese family sit down to dinner
a Timorese troupe sings a welcome
Offering melons at $2.99 each
And glowing jesus’ for sale


2 slum kids push their jumpers over their hands
And roll marbles down to the Town Hall
Where our forefathers
Stand in togas and munch cigars
The Great Hunt had begun
The first wagon train set off from under Dimmey’s canvas awnings
slashing its way across the woodchip landscape
Past some dirty rotten brickwork
To where an armoured car awaited it’s fate in the long grass
The stains on the walls here are prodigious
Like a school of whales had once lain there
But they didn’t leave the graffiti ‘Keon Traitor!’ in 1956

The landscape was in decay
The landscape was being developed
The CUB factory emptied its swill out into Victoria Street every morning
Where a band of Phillipino dancers twirled umbrellas
and bags of rice lined the footpath
The fire brigade and their tiger
Rushed to the building
But it was old and crumbling

The Hitman lined up his violin case
to take a shot at the precious tiger cub
as goths and imps with bat wings
crouched in the shadows of terrace building tops




Malcolm Hill 2001