Tales from the 470

Eleven strangers. One bus route. The 470 carries them all, and Oscar caught a little of each life along the way.

The Boy with Earphones
Gregory had escaped high school, but that hadn’t stopped his stubborn skin blemishes, which confined him to a lonely inner world, forever waiting for them to disappear. Each day as he travelled to work, however, this exile was briefly halted by immersion into a world of soaring music where his skin didn’t matter.

The Fashion Mavericks
The two fashion mavericks sported identical maroon pants and blue sneakers.

The Childless Father
Hugh Jenkins was a childless father who lived as though he were still a single man. His son longed to receive the affection bestowed on his father’s prized cologne, gym bag and string of femme fatales.

The Traveller with the Pink Hat
The man with a pink straw hat and deep green overalls boarded the bus and buoyantly remarked that a bus on the same route had arrived simultaneously. This mysterious traveller seemed unacquainted with life’s cruel and mundane ways.

The Fate of Albert Cross
Albert Cross was 16th century England’s greatest landowner and celebrated inventor of the microscope. Or rather, he would have been, had he not been born 500 years later in 21st century Australia. This quirk of fate limited his notoriety to fluorescent green running shorts that prompted glances from passersby.

The Prized Possession
Even as an older lady, Gina was still strikingly attractive. In fact, her life had been built upon this very beauty and desirability. As the years passed she clung desperately to it, all the while ruing every passing day as time slowly stole her most prized possession.

The Old Man with the Colourful Bracelets
I saw an old man whose white beard framed his face, and as he wheeled a suitcase of his possessions behind him, paused for a moment to hawk hand-weaved bracelets of assorted colours to the stream of passersby. And as I watched, I wondered about the 70 year journey that had brought him here, and how many he hoped to sell, and whether the sum of his life was what he held in his hand.

Jethro’s Dilemma
In 2012, wealthy New York debtor Jethro Fairfax presented this dilemma to James Pietersen in return for waiving his $35,000 debt: for one week, without explaining the circumstances to anyone, wear either the luminous tracksuit pants or the satin tracksuit top throughout the normal course of your work week.

Peter and the Man with Bags
The homeless man carried in his hands the accumulated possessions of his entire life. As Peter looked on, he felt like that man — only, Peter carried with him a career’s accumulated knowledge of how to complete a series of little-valued compliance tasks.

The Cleaner, the Busdriver, the Streetsweeper
Say hello to your cleaner, bus driver and street sweeper. Ponder your life if they didn’t clean your office, drive you to work and school, or sweep your streets. Should an unexpected contagion wipe them out, you’d suddenly love what they did for you. Don’t wait until then.