（请将下面文章中的划线部分译成汉语）
Your River
Clare Boyd-Macrae
A daily riverside walk is restorative—especially along the industrial part of the
Maribyrnong in Footscray. I am lucky enough to work at a place where I can walk by a
river every day, and I do. Three or four times a week I spend my lunch break strolling
beside the Maribyrnong, Melbourne’s other great, but mainly overlooked river. There are
two ways I can turn, when I reach the water’s edge. Turn left, and it’s a pretty track: golf
courses and cricket ovals, luxury apartments with a great deal of glass, and a recently
constructed artificial lake that will form the centrepiece of a flash new housing estate that’s
being built. Overlooked it may be, but there are attractive stretches aplenty along the
course of the Maribyrnong. Despite this, however, most days I find myself turning right,
which is definitely the industrial end.
The Footscray Park is pretty enough: classic Edwardian gardens, complete with all
manner of deciduous trees you don’t see much anywhere else on this side of town. Closer
to the river’s edge, there are the palm trees distinctive to the area. The city, with its high
grey buildings, is in constant evidence, and opposite are the great, tiered stands of the
Flemington Race Course. Then the park ends and the race course ends and you’re into
serious industrial territory. Or almost. You pass under Smithfield Road（called “Lynch’s
Bridge”on the map）, and there’s a rustic-looking fence. The country feel of it is spoiled
somewhat by the electricity pylons, towering above the too-dry wetlands squeezed
between the river and the railway tracks.
Despite the recent rain, despite what it’s called, this piece of land is as dry as a bone
this year—cracked grey earth where the shallow pools are supposed to provide sanctuary
for birds. There are rushes of some description; there is a viewing platform. There are two
optimistic signs, one declaring it a “wildlife preservation area” and one, faded and blue,
charting the “wetland birds of Southern Australia”. But I seldom see any. The next bridge,
small and unpretentious, unnamed in my Melway, is what I call the abattoir bridge. Its crisscross metal frame is reproduced, quite beautifully, in a mosaic under the bridge,
showing five hapless sheep and three horned cattle, jostling across to their final exit. This
is where the doomed beasts once walked over the river, from the railway yards to the
Kensington abattoirs on the other side, before the abattoirs, too, were bulldozed to make
way for still more luxury apartments. At the tight, western tip of the wetlands, before it’s
sliced off by the railway bridge, there is, at last, a sizeable puddle, and a sign proclaiming
“Newell’s Paddock, an Urban Nature Park”. Another massive pylon, then the railway
bridge, built of immense bluestone blocks, blackened. There’s impressive graffiti along
every available expanse of concrete around here: pink and silver and green, but it must be
harder to paint on the knobbly bluestone because it’s almost graffiti-free.
The river turns abruptly right, and the path follows, away from the city, towards the
bay. There’s a windswept grassy plain with some brave, stunted little gum trees trying to
grow. The river continues to curve, and there are signs about picking up your dog’s poo.
There are rubbish bins and slatted seats, although I’ve never seen anyone on them.
Walkers, yes, and joggers, but no sitters. I park myself on one of the seats, facing the
water and the factories beyond. Always, there is noise above the subtle lapping of the
river: industry, traffic and trains. Dynon Street Bridge is where I cross over and turn back.
A sign on the other side tells me it’s five kilometres to Port Phillip Bay, and maybe one day
I’ll take a seriously long lunch break and walk all the way.
Over on the other side, fences separate the walking track from the factories. There
are piles of brick and rubble, cranes, industrial-size trucks and empty pallets. I make my
way back to the afternoon’s work, refreshed by open air and exercise and by being beside
the water, which can be as still as a pond one day, and all scuffed up and restless the next.
It’s not the most scenic walk. But there is life here, and beauty, too, if you look hard
enough. Like my orange starfish last week. There are tour boats; there are dogs cavorting
and people meandering. There are seagulls on the water and circling above. And there’s
me, trying to work out why something in me prefers this industrial landscape to the
tarted-up end of the river. Maybe it’s simply because there’s a kind of raw honesty about it.
Industry is what we all live off: the money and the goods it makes. But mostly we hide it
away as far as possible from our tidy homes, and pretend it doesn’t exist. There’s a kind of
integrity about this stretch of the Maribyrnong. It’s a real, urban river, and I, for one, am
content to take my daily constitutional here.
