Linked by the City-Springvale commuter rail line, the second component of the Melbourne Festival version of The Hawker’s Song was located in the heart of the Cambodian community of Melbourne. A soundscape of hawker’s calls was installed on the Springvale railway Station platform above the self-serve ticket machine. A rear-projected image and sound installation in the window of the Advance Laundrette opposite the railways station in the shopping precinct of Springvale completes the Melbourne Festival version of the project.

The work in Springvale was inspired by the rich cultural tradition of orality, exchange and commerce that appears to be dying in a race towards ‘modernisation’. It focuses on global concerns around the death of the local, in the face of infrastructural and technological progression. It features audio recordings of the memories of street hawkers and their calls that were recorded with people in the Springvale community. These memories were layered with field and studio audio recordings made in Cambodia. The images projected in the laundrette window featured hawkers and street scenes shot on Super 8, and Standard 8 film and highlight the importance of the hawker tradition in the cultural fabric of Cambodia.