Under the Bridge - Place Grounding

“Under the Bridge” is a public art project to celebrate Moonee Ponds Creek and the local community. Murals were painted on four pillars beneath the Tullamarine Freeway which celebrates the environmental and cultural benefits of healthy waterways to all who live locally or travel through the area on train, bike, car or by foot. Artist Tom Civil worked with a small team of local artists to paint murals on pillars near Debney’s Park in Flemington along the Moonee Ponds Creek Trail and beside Mt Alexander Road.

Pillar One - “Place Grounding”

This real and imagined topographic map of the Moonee Ponds Creek aims to ground people in the area they are living in. The maps of waterways are always changing, both naturally from the floods and droughts of cyclic and changing weather, as well as from the alterations from human landscaping. The Moonee Ponds Creek is one of the most altered creeks in the country, and is a fascinating place to discuss the role of waterways in our community.

The creek in recent history has travelled through a very hostile environment; acting as a dumping ground for the cities pollutants, it’s natural flow and ponds have been diverted and filled in, and in parts the creek has been concreted to make a drain.

The use of a topographic map here has a double meaning, to both allude to the way in recent history the creek has been looked at by city developers as almost a ‘problem to overcome’, and in another way the reality that the creek is a corridor of life through the city to celebrate and has been a vital part of life for people for a very long time. This map aims to simply show the landscape and allow us to dream of what things once were and what they could be.

Assistance from Christian Veins and Edwina Green.