A short distance from the Club X adult shop and the red-light district on the fringes of St Kilda’s Acland Street, a sexual dynamic of a different kind was taking place.
Among the gums and exotic vegetation in St Kilda’s Botanic Gardens a pair of grey butcherbirds were into a second round of mating ritual, after rearing a nest of young earlier in the breeding season.
The sexual frolics of humans and birds in St Kilda tell a story of two worlds, at the same time separate and connected within the framework of the city which is Melbourne.
The botanic gardens are a rare green open space squeezed into the tight inner confines of the city and it doesn’t need a pair of loving butcherbirds revelling in its green, fecund six hectares to demonstrate it.
A group of Chinese tourists, at first with smart-phone cameras at the ready in the red light district (apparently they don’t have sex shops in China) were now photographing a male butcherbird performing his erotic dance in the botanic gardens.
The Chinese spent several hours there, admiring not only the antics of the birds but the exotic foreign trees, and disappointed there were none from China. But one of the visitors who spoke English, and asked me to take a selfie of the party, said that they were “just happy to take a time-out among trees”.
When I view Asian cities on television I am always struck by the absence of trees among the modern high-rise landscapes of concrete and glass. These developments seem to ignore the latest research into urban living which has revealed that people in cities benefit from exposure to green spaces. Parks and gardens are in fact good for both physical and mental health, providing space for exercise and contemplation, a calming of the mind in a frantic man-made environment.
It is research that also seems to be ignored in the modern planning of Melbourne, particularly the new docklands development viewed from the Skybus as it reaches Southern Cross terminal.
I have been visiting Melbourne for nearly 20 years – usually to see the Australian Open tennis championships, as on the latest occasion – and the city has changed dramatically in those years. Each time I view the new developments I notice that open space and more specifically trees do not accompany them.
When first staying in St Kilda a few years back, I was pleased to discover the botanic gardens. When Melbourne was expanding in the mid-1800s, the planners of St Kilda had the foresight to set aside a great open space or the appreciation of “natural curiosities”. The trees planted then have grown into magnificent specimens, even if the park manages to disappoint Chinese visitors by not displaying Ginkgo biloba, an ancient “fossil’’ tree dating to the age of the dinosaurs which can coincidentally also be found on the streets of South Hobart.
The butcherbirds were not complaining, though. In man’s urban jungle, they have found a refuge to create their own red-light district.