Melburnian Rain

By Blake Wells

I step out of my apartment and the door clicks shut behind me.

The sound echoes about the stairwell and mixes with music resounding from apartments upstairs and down. Outside it is twilight, dark blue skies and specks of city light wobble in and around swirling, fast-moving storm clouds. The air is warm and damp and the rain is cool. It falls in long, steady silver streams, creating temporary impressions on the paths and roads.

Lightning illuminates pools of water before me and thunder claps loudly, rumbling away into the distance. A tram tumbles and scrapes its way past along wet metal rails. I watch it spark electricity and hear its bell ring as it disappears down the hill behind me.

I continue to walk on, bouncing up and down, splashing in puddles and skipping over the gutters of soaked cobblestone. Streetlights shine rays which stretch out then retract, altering my path with their illusions.

I am suddenly taken back in time, to a walk with my mother through the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. I was much younger and she, it had seemed, much older. It had begun raining heavily, just approaching twilight. The puddles forming on the path before us had looked like oceans; the gardens had become wild forests and the way out had seemed like an impossible maze.    

But now, I stop to smoke under a café front. As I light my cigarette, I pause to stare at streetlights and car lights distorted and blurred by rain. Cars hiss by as they skate away down the road. Wellington Parade, through the haze, is beginning to resemble a shallow river.

People dash from parked cars, huddling under umbrellas and scuttling into the cafe doorway. Each time the door opens, pleasing coffee aromas waft out into the street. A waitress stops at a table near the window. I notice she is wearing a smart black and white uniform and I am tempted to go in as I watch her take her notebook out of her apron with a flourish.  

As I move out towards the street, a teardrop from a solitary cloud falls thousands of feet from above and lands on my eyelash. For a moment it rests, suspended there, before I blink and it shatters into many droplets which speckle and tickle my cheek.

This storm will do damage, that will be revealed tomorrow. But, tonight, it is marvellous. Under rainfall our romantic city is as fragrant as a rainforest, full of colour, bells and love. I realise that our young Melbourne is a breathtaking work of art. I only wish that I could be the one to capture it in all its beauty …