farmdoc's blog post number 182

Last Thursday on the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets in Melbourne, I saw this simple floral tribute. Two months ago, 33-year-old pregnant lawyer Carolyn Rawlins was killed riding her bicycle to work, after her tyres slipped on the tram-tracks, throwing her to the roadway and under a following tour bus. Why did people place flowers on the spot where the accident occurred, I wondered. To highlight that when a bus hits a cyclist, the bus always wins? To remind Melbourne City Council that a bus ban in Swanston Street is urgently overdue? Or to mourn the sudden and preventable death of someone whose life was tragically cut short by a vehicle symbolising the socio-environmental antithesis of her final activity? I remember the floral ocean outside Buckingham Palace’s fence after Princess Diana died in 1997. But it didn’t touch me anything like Rawlins’s small floral tribute did, even though Rawlins was publicly unknown and Diana had a global profile and was recognised for her humanitarian work. The message? If something small evokes a response, something over a thousand times bigger may not evoke a proportional response; it could even have less effect. Anyway, years ago I was riding my bicycle near the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets when my tyres slipped on the tram-tracks, throwing me to the roadway . Luckily, no tour bus was behind me.