11/11

A couple of major intersections in the city close down for a couple of minutes at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month for Remembrance Day, hailing back to World War 1, back then in history known as the Great War. They did not know there would be another Great War.

For the last few years I've been at the corner of Swanston and Collins Street at that hour, where dignitaries come out of Town Hall to watch, where I was standing, while police stop all car traffic, trams and pedestrians and a bugler plays the Last Post in the middle of the intersection.

It is quite a moving experience, especially to hear the city go silent.

I wasn't focused on recording the event but I did take some photos and a couple of videos, one of which is unusable as it is upside down. 

I don't remember saving this from anywhere, but it's nice. 

I went on to Oakleigh by train, where I sat and ate my sandwich brought from home and then bought a fruit tart and coffee to have at a cafe. While my grandmother did her weekly shopping in Oakleigh, at the small Nancarrows supermarket, the butchers and the fishmonger (still one in the same location 60 years later) my grandfather would visit the Oakleigh Junction Hotel to slowly drink one beer. 

The building is almost perfectly symmetrical but not quite. Built in 1889, it is very handsome. There was a constant flow of buses travelling past.