The cab floats into the dark blue evening, guided by neon lights ahead.

The cab driver is chatting.

“St Kilda was named after a boat. The Lady of St Kilda that sat anchored off shore for a long time in the early days. So long did The Lady of St Kilda stay moored off shore and so long did the locals refer to The Lady that it was only a matter of time that this mysterious boat became a local legend. Local’s tongues traded tales of this boat that hovered on their horizon. And soon enough The Lady of St Kilda herself became the first of St Kilda’s larger than life character’s, reclining across the horizon every night, singing a stunning sirens song, playing a ukulele, the music shimmering across the dark blue waves, luring sailors and unaware visitors from the shore, out to a dark blue yonder at the bottom of the bay…………”

My cab driver turns around to get a look at me. Beneath her cab drivers cap her dark hair is straggled across her face and her grin is punctuated with a gold tooth.

Our floating cab drifts past the grand houses of old, lit as if up for our arrival, boasting names like The Majestic, The Ritz, The Hollywood Hotel. They proudly project their mock Grecian frontage as it would have been in the 1860’s when St Kilda was a nine mile bumpy carriage ride over the track from Batmania.

“But these days it’s the exact reverse. Behind these grand facades you’ll find the lives of the trashed and bashed, the alcoholic, mentally ill, sexually abused and drug fucked. That’s St Kilda – shows you a glitzy face with a web of tawdry tales behind.

“The locals woke up one morning to find the Lady of St Kilda wrecked on their shore. Its Scottish sea captain was later charged with being drunk in charge of a vessel but month’s later baysiders swore they could hear the sirens song shimmering across the waters and the see the shadow of a woman stretched across the horizon as the sun went down…”

Around Grey Street our floating cab suddenly runs aground, “Look out!” cries the cabby.” We’ve hit a Traffic Island! Hold on, we’re going under………”

As we slide down into the dark blue beyond I look out of the window and see the George Hotel, a grand old dame tarted up, disappearing from view.

Drifting downwards I see a gold light glowing from the sea floor. The slip stream pulls us towards it, and I see that it is a large old fashioned ship lying on its side, festooned with decorations and turrets carvings of mythological creatures like winged griffins, fierce cherubims and tough tattooed mermaids.

With a dull thud, the cab bumps into the side of the ship.

Unwinding the back window of the cab I float out into this delightful blue green sea.  Inexplicably I have no trouble breathing, and these strange creatures, which include pink seahorses and yellow crabs, seem to be friendly locals. The ship’s old bowed planks breathe in and out with the waves as if it were the gentle host of this underwater gathering.

In front of us is a hatch.

My cabbie has lost the cap and her dark black hair is free and flowing like sea grass.
“If you wanna see the real St Kilda, You’ll be needing this”, she says, handing me a big, rusty old key from her key ring.

I insert the big old rusty key into an ancient looking, grey lock.  The hatch door swings open throwing a golden light back out at us. In the distance I can hear music, accordions….

We float into a corridor, like the deserted corridor of an old grand hotel. We spy a light where the sounds are coming from. Approaching a window we look inside a cabin. It is an old wooden ship cabin carved in the style of 150 years ago. Amazingly inside the cabin there are people. They are animated, talking and laughing and eating and dancing and playing accordion music. The walls are covered with shimmering golden wallpaper reflecting an ethereal glow on to the faces of the people. 

I recognize this as Café Scheherazade; the home away from home of the immigrants from Europe, the Russian refugees who came to Balaclava, the Jews who escaped the death camps. There is a writer sitting in the corner with a notebook. His name is Arnold Zable. He collects stories of these old folks and weaves them into a tapestry of memories that tracks a thread between immigrants from different generations and different origins but who end up here at the Café Scheherazade.
A customer is complaining,” I don’t want that bagel. That’s yesterday bagel”.

 “But that Café is no longer in St Kilda”, I try to tell my taxi driver, as she swims on ahead.

“Maybe this is where the good bits are kept… for posterity…” she says as I catch up with her at another window, another cabin, the light spilling out into the hallway. This cabin is very different from the last. It is the loungeroom of a flat, a post world war two apartment, in East St Kilda. It is very modern circa 1963 - wooden carved coffee table, aqua blue lounge, an Albert Namatjira painting on the wall next to a Polynesian print.  In the trendy cream brick American style flat a young Graham Kennedy in a shimmering shark skin suit is pacing up and down, smoking a cigarette, talking into a new red telephone, its curly chord running down past his pointy crocodile skin shoes.

“I want a cab here straight away or tell channel 9 they can get stuffed!”

“Do you think this is the Lady of St Kilda?” I call out to my Cab driver. “Are we in the Lady of St Kilda?” .She smiles slightly as she glides ahead of me but doesn’t answer.

We come across a cabin that is bright and happy and full of furniture of reds and greens and yellow and oranges. The Galleon Café. All the tables and chairs are 1950s sets, all mismatched, the furniture like in your grandma’s house. There are musicians, tourists, students, cleaning ladies, d.j.’s, plumbers, hippies, ferals, motorbike riders, film stars, people who seem to have been sitting there for hours, days, weeks, years……

“That was the past. We have to go up the stairs now. The memories are safely stored away. Upstairs will take us closer to the real St Kilda in the present….”

The spiral stairs are narrow and we squeeze our way up. There are many levels to this ship it seems.

She says, “It’s like the Titanic, capturing in time all the layers of St Kilda. Wave after wave of people wash into St Kilda and wash through St Kilda, each leaving a thin film of memory on it’s surface, until there are layers and layers of time and generations and visitors layered like an archeological dig.”

We come up onto the deck.
“This is where the interesting people get a berth. This is called Steerage – the cheap seats.”

We pass a rudely constructed shack on the deck under the main boom. It is being used as an artist’s studio. The artist is pointing at his canvass with his paint brush like a sword. “You’ll never defeat me!” he is calling out to his half finished painting. “I will fight you in an honourable fight to the death, you pretentious, pissant painting!  Hemingway has his fish. The bullfighter has his beast!” He gives a strangled cry and charges at the painting….

We move on….

On the deck is another cabin in the style of a small football pavilion. We peer in the window and smudge away the grime and sea spray.

On the deck a crowd of people is milling about.

A woman in her thirties is telling us with an English accent,  “I love it. I love it. I came here in 95. I just love the whole scene, the Dogs Bar and everything, Spuntinos….. I had such a great time I decided to emigrate. Went back to the UK and packed my things. Had no trouble getting in. Now I’m a lawyer in South Melbourne and I live above the Dogs Bar. It’s so funny to drive past in my Lexus those places I slept in with 12 other backpackers after winning trivia nights. It was the making of me. I love it.”

The wind shifts the boat, and the sails flap. Suddenly there is no-one else on deck, just the taxi driver and me.

She turns around to face me, pushing the hair out of her eyes and starts to speak to me in a low voice. It dawns upon me that she is a woman around forty years old and it dawns on me that she too is a St Kilda person.

“I started out in St Kilda as a seventeen year old. When I had had enough of the St Kilda scene I got the hell out of there and went around the world. I lived in London and LA and went to Mexico. There I met a visionary crazy man. He was married. We had a passionate affair.  I stayed in Mexico. I fell pregnant. Then he disappeared into his community. With my tail between my legs I headed back to Melbourne to have my baby. My catholic parents were appalled. Eventually I landed in bloody old St Kilda.  I had the baby, a beautiful girl called Ruby. I didn’t go out much in St Kilda. I didn’t go out for a long time. One day a friend from the Mothers group invited me to a festival. It was held in Jackson Street. Everyone was wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots. I was staring at these faces that were lined and battered but somehow familiar. Ruby ran off to play with the other kids. I called out to her “Ruby!” Five other little girls turned and ran towards me. I laughed for the first time in years. I met the woman who was running the event. She told me, “We wanted to put on a festival for the locals not a big tourist festival. This is a gathering for the St Kilda that lives down the side streets and the laneways.”

“I still hope Ruby can meet her father one day….I’ve got a part time job driving cabs. I found an old painting in an op shop. It’s called The Lady of St Kilda. It shows an old wreck under the water and there’s woman lying across the horizon like a Polynesian princess and she strumming a ukulele.

Sometimes it gets hard and I imagine I’m out on the water.”

A gentle voice started up from somewhere and sails fluttered.

 “I want you to meet a St Kilda family. The families are different in St Kilda. All sorts. There’s no set structure, no generation gap they reckon. It’s because there’s such great support in this community. This family – the Mum works in education, the father is a professional ballroom dancer, the daughter manages Veludo Bar, the other daughter wants to be a farmer. But they are all friends”. Laughing, Daughter Number 1 tells how she’s had to kick Dad out of Veludo Bar more than once for being drunk. ”That says a lot about the closeness of families here.”

“And the younguns, the next generation, are born and bred in St Kilda. That’s pretty cool. Not many can say that. Most have come here from somewhere else you know….

We come to the Captains Cabin. A bunch of young teenagers have taken it over.

One of them is looking into an old tube hanging down from the ceiling. “Hey what’s that?” asks the cabbie.

“It’s the captain’s periscope. It can look up to the surface,” says one of the kids.

“What can you see?”
“That’ll be five bucks.”
“Hey!”
“We’re in a rock band and we’re saving up to go to overseas. So cough up.”

We cough up the five bucks.

“What can you see?” I ask, “What’s happening on the surface?”

The feisty fourteen year old starts moving his hips and kind of singing as he looks in the periscope.

“There’s a party going down
In St Kilda town

Come on all youse cashed up bogans
Can’t you read the frickin slogans

The Lonely Planets top destination
Third best festival destination in the nation

Hot nights outside The Vineyard
the drummers play it so hard
Fire twirlers twirling through the night
Hope some real estate guy don’t start a fight

Hey blond Barbie dolls in your GI jeeps
These French guys play for keeps

Scooters, schemers in-line skaters
Funky waitress, hungover waiters

Pork pie dreadlock hat is where it’s at
Meets Aztec goddess in the Laundromat

Hey designer dude
Don’t be rude
I like your designer stubble
You’re living in a champagne bubble”

“What’s that song called?”

Oh I dunno..’Chaddy by the Sea is not for me’….. maybe

“OK OK OK. Enough already.
Thank you younguns,” says the Cabbie.

“Would you like to return to the surface?” Asks the cabbie.

“Oh I don’t know…”
I look around, not wanting to leave.

“Do I have to pay you now?” I ask as I pull some sodden notes from my jeans.

But she has gone.

In the distance I can’t quite make out the music.

I set off swimming for the surface following the sound of the ukulele. Suddenly I am at the surface of Port Phillip Bay. It’s dusk, there are flickering lights about, and I can make out the St Kilda pier. And on the horizon I can just see the outline of a woman with dark hair across her eyes, reclining on the edge of the horizon, strumming a ukulele and singing gently.