The view from the top of the bottom of the world was spectacular.

In spite of the fact that we’ve been to the top of a few tall buildings: The Eiffel Tower, the Sears Tower, and the Empire State Building, to name a few, we don’t really rush to the highest point in any new place. I’m not one that’s drawn to the top; I don’t need to check the CN tower off my list, even though I’m Canadian. I can live at ground level. Happily.

Nonetheless, we were whisked to the top of the bottom of the world today. The highest public vantage point in the southern hemisphere, to be exact: The Eureka Skydeck, in Melbourne. It was part of the kids’ gig with Bound Round and so we all enjoyed checking out the view finders, reading the plaques and being awed by the amount of sway a building of this size can take.

Of course climbing into the sliding death trap known as the “Edge” and being pushed out of the building was a highlight for my thrill seeking boys. The glass floor was cool. I enjoyed adopting a muslim prayer posture, with my head against the floor and staring down into space. That was cool.

But mostly, I enjoyed the art.

From the bottom of the clouds the whole world is art and math, math and art, perhaps they’re one in the same. The lines of the city forming the structure for the long slow curve of the river. Living mosaics of flowers lining walkways in the botanical garden and the predictable pattern of ripples in the surface of the Yarra where oars dipped from water-bug scows hold up the chaos of the city with their dependable regularity. A seating area in the shape of a nautilus shell. A compass rose tiled into a round about. The reflection of blue, and green, and vermillion in then thousand mirrored glass panels. Trains the size of toys zipping in and out of Flinder’s Street Station. A three trailer road train packed with cattle running down the middle of the three lane road directly below us, an odd juxtaposition of country and city, farm and urban jungle.

And then, there is the sound:

Honking, beeping, bustling, drumming. Jackhammers and high heeled shoes, scuffling feet and the endless rotation of tires on pavement. Clear notes from a saxophone being played on the promenade in front of Southgate drift up, commingled with the panoply of sounds that make up the serenade of a city, like sung prayers to a distant god.