Part One
In the fading light of late afternoon, the clatter and clang of metal banging against metal, the rattle of chains, the grunt and groans of motors as cranes and forklifts hoisted containers on and off ships at the dockyards, on and off trucks at the Coode Island storage facility, amplified and persistent descended on the riverbank heavy as hail. The factories rang their change of shift sirens and workers called out to mates on their way to their cars, their bikes, on their walk home. Antonello, keen to catch the last of the light, sat on the bank of the Yarra River sketching the half made Westgate Bridge.
The city centre flat and one-dimensional faded behind a soft mist. Nearby the majestic gums shimmered in the light breeze and the…show more content… Antonello began drawing the bridge before Premier Bolte signed off on the contracts, before Antonello knew he was going to be a bridge builder, copying from the artist’s representations and blueprints of the proposed bridge that were printed in the newspapers – the solid pylons, the long roadway, the spires, the snaking expanse across the water. Lines, curves, shadows.
He imagined that driving over the bridge a person would feel as if they were flying.
He was fascinated by the bridge and the desire that initiated it. To bridge a river, especially one as wide as the Yarra, was a grand ambition. When he was a boy his grandfather often took him to the wharf in Messina to watch the ferry leave Sicily for mainland Italy.
‘They say they’re going to build a bridge so that we can walk across sea,’ he remembered his grandfather telling him.
‘Who is going to build it, Nonno?’ He remembered wondering what kind of man would be able to build a bridge across the sea.
‘I don’t believe them,’ his grandfather said. ‘It’s impossible. The sea can’t be conquered, and only Christ can walk on
