by Liz Sinclair

Created on: July 22, 2009

For me, riding the number 109 tram isn't just a daily routine; it's also an on-going love affair with Melbourne. Besides running the longest route in the tram network, the new, low-floored, wheel-chair accessible, pram-friendly vehicle, with its great, glass windows and huge, swiveling doors, hosts the diverse pageantry and drama that is multi-cultural Australia in this city of migrants that I have come to call home.

Ting-ting-A. The tram bell sings out. Like a long, sleek, white ship with wires in place of sails, the 109 appears, gliding down the road from Kew. I am standing by the stop in front of a Vietnamese grocery store on the corner of Lennox and Victoria in Abbotsford, where the heroin dealers are doing a roaring trade. When a police car glides out of a side street, the dealers jump on the tram and ride it for a few blocks, looking nervously back out the windows, before they hop off, laughing and mock-punching each other. I travel to Port Melbourne to visit a friend. Along Collins Street, the tram fills with men and women, dressed in expensive suits, who work in the financial district. I'm certain that in their other, non-commuting, lives they drive BMWs, Saabs or Volvos, but even people in finance know the value of a dollar, and that time spent sitting in traffic is time wasted. Gripping their briefcases, and talking into mobile phones, they push impatiently through the crowd at the last stop and stalk off, not even glancing at the mammoth bulk of the Spirit of Tasmania ferry that dominates the harbor in Port Melbourne.

On the return journey, there are giggling, teenage girls wearing tiny tops with thin straps that bare their tummies. They talk loudly, glancing around to see who notices them and spill out awkwardly, bumping into each other, squealing with laughter, when the tram reaches Crown Casino. Middle-aged, bustling Greek and Italian wives get on at Spencer Street, near Southern Cross train station, wearing black, busty and stout, with gold teeth, wheeled shopping trollies in tow, and drab husbands, dressed in brown, trailing in their wake.

The newest riders are African; they are so tall, even the teenagers, that they tower over everyone with their lanky height; they have dusky, black-brown skin. They smell of stale sweat and spice. In the mornings, the younger ones, on their way to school, are always laughing and giggling; the girls bold and loud, the boys shyly polite as I weave my way through the swaying crowd for my stop. I know they come from

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