t was the silence that got me. It was uncanny. As if I’d crossed an invisible portal into another world. A few minutes before I’d been on Melbourne’s Johnston Street, with its heavy trucks, orange commuter buses, crowded pavements, hipster gin palaces, vinyl record stores, and trains to Flinders Street passing overhead at Victoria Park Station. It’s as near to the inner city as makes no difference. I was meeting my friend Alistair, a sound artist, who lives close to Abbotsford Convent and who has only great things to say about the wide menu of attractions it offers. We were walking towards a couple of church spires that we could see in the treelined distance. A short side street led us straight to the heart of the Convent complex. We grabbed a table in the sunshine, at one of several outdoor cafes and restaurants, and it was here that the city noise fell away and left behind a silence that gradually filled with bird song
