Gdoof gdoof gdoof

Opalescent Signs on Chinchen Street in Islington backs onto Styx Creek. They have a fence made out of concrete reinforcing mesh; it’s overgrown with a kind of purple-flowering vine but I can still see in, and the guys can see out. If I’m taking the eastern banking down under  Chinchen Street bridge, past Islington Public School and as far as the TAFE then I go past Opalescent Signs, and this compressor. It’s endless g’doof g’doof g’doof sound is the backdrop to my mornings.

I like it though because it reminds me of some wild Harley-inspired steam-punk time machine or something.

Opposite Opalescent Signs, on the western bank, is a place with huge, tall sheds. There are great tall stacks of pallets and guys beaver around in forklift trucks, moving them back and forth. Jambo is fascinated by them, these forklifts – fascinated, I suspect, in a “capture and kill” kind of way. I reckon it’s a scale or perspective thing; he think they’re actually quite small, like rats or baby rabbits. Capture. Kill.

The steam-punk compressor kicked off a minor vehicle theme in my head. Behind Phillips Street is this renovator’s delight. There used to be a show on ABC when my kids were little in which the characters were all toys; there was inevitably a truck called (from memory) Diesel and it looked just like this.

Or this.

I looped round the creek, the gasworks and back up Clyde Street on Friday morning. I think it’s a crying shame that the centenary of the beautiful old Gas and Coke building slipped by unnoticed, and I feel annoyed with myself for not having pushed to make something happen.

On Chatham Road we came across an entire falafel, not the usual half-eaten job thrown from a car window at a passing cyclist (he said, speaking from bitter experience). What happened? Late night high jinks, on the way home from the Kent? Or did it fall out of someone’s backpack? That would have been annoying! So many streets, so many stories!