You go somewhere and it is good and you think why didn't we do this a hundred times before. I was sitting on a beach. The teenagers were sitting kind of beside me and kind of not beside me, in the distant way that teenagers do, and they were reading books that were probably more highbrow than the ones I would have read when they were toddlers digging in the sand. You could have brought them here when they were two, four, seven, whatever. That internal voice. It never shuts up telling you what you should have done in the past. Sometimes it screams. They could have dug in the sand and watched the ships.
The beach was Port Melbourne, crowded, early evening, still hot. A cruise liner detached itself from Station Pier in complete silence like a city block on an ice floe, and slid down the bay, a square of gold in the setting sun. OK, we could have come here before. But didn’t we take them to plenty of other beaches? Williamstown? Altona? Blairgowrie? South Melbourne? Rye, of course.
That reply was a little defensive. Self-inquisition, and now a second internal voice for the defence. I should have been a lawyer. I've got a court of law inside my head.
It was because of the traffic, mainly. Crossing the Westgate eventually got too hard, took too long, too many roadworks and closures. So one day in early summer I escaped the bridge traffic and took the first exit left off Bolte Bridge, dropped down into Lorimer, curled around under CityLink, and turned right on Normanby. From there to Bay Street was five or ten minutes, free parking after hours, and a two-minute beach walk. My case rests. Williamstown would have taken twice as long, at least.
We stayed a couple of hours and walked stooping under the Port Melbourne Yacht Club which juts out on poles into the water, and went out onto the pier and looked back at the old warehouses and grain stores now turned into nightclubs and apartments. We left the beach some time around nine.
Fifteen minutes later the view to the right from Bolte bridge was a blinding orange city of sunset-tinged tower windows and to the left, docklands: rust-stained hoists and conveyors edged in bronze silhouette over the red tangle of rail lines below, with square-browed freighters standing stolidly at their dock like dictators' henchmen. A drive-in theatre with a double bill and no entry fee. Driving through it is like desecrating a painting. You want to stop the car and get out.
The swimming had made them hungry. Closer to home, and just that bit darker, the siren-song festooned lightbulbs of a hamburger and fish'n'chip shop cried 'stop here' so we did, although I had never before visited the place.
The steak sandwich is a test of the fast-food maker’s art, which is why you don’t see them often any more. These passed the test. The bread, encasing steak cooked to what Italians call al dente (even though that is of pasta) was neither overdone nor too rare but somehow just right; and also contained lettuce, tomato, melting cheese, fried onions that were barely there but instrumental, and mayonnaise adjacent to the lettuce and barbecue sauce to the steak: and the whole lot had been jammed into the toaster for exactly the right shade of toastiness and the juices gathered in the waxed paper bag and it was just right. Times three. You could have been coming here for years, the voice started again. Shut the fuck up, I told it.
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