Moonee Ponds Creek, northern Melbourne suburbs, VIC, Australia

Dwarfed by Citylink in North Melbourne.

When I first looked at a map of Brunswick West/Moonee Ponds before moving to the area, I noticed Moonee Ponds Creek flowing between the two. “How nice,” I thought, “I could go for pleasant evening strolls along there.” Then I actually saw the creek. To call it a “creek” is to grossly overstate reality. At its southern reaches, it was widened into a small canal for the conveyance of coal to railway yards in the days of steam locomotives and isn't too grotesque:

Railway Canal in West Melbourne.

In the mid-20^th century, the then Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works had the brilliant idea of concreting the whole bloody thing from Flemington Road north to Strathmore as some sort of flood mitigation strategy. The buffoons turned it into a hideous stormwater drain, a watercourse with almost no natural or redeeming qualities.

Here it is north of Flemington Road in Parkville, complete with bizarre erections that look like they come from U2's insipid Vertigo Tour imagery:

And here it is, marking the border between Moonee Ponds and Brunswick West. During times of heavy rain, it occasionally fills close to the top of the concrete and bears a faint resemblance to an actual river, but it is usually an awful, stagnant skidmark across a slab of concrete:

Nothing lives in here. Even the pigeons usually give it a miss. It is discoloured and it has an unpleasant whiff about it. Apparently some skateboarders have put the sloped concrete walls to use, but if this is your idea of a mad place to skateboard, I don't really know what to say to you except that you must be pretty desperate. Even more laughable, I once saw a father in Brunswick West taking his two children and their dog to frolic in the creek on a hot summer's day. Had the father promised the kids a cool dip in the water without telling them it would be the most pissweak dip ever? I don't know about you, but I prefer not to waste my leisure time beside a skidmark.

Rating: Our very first "cellar floor", for crimes against nature.