Mystery

During my long walk from Mt Lawley to Leederville on Wednesday morning, I came across this little piece of broken glass.





It was an unusual shade of deep blue-green, with a textured pattern on one side. It might have come from a bottle, but it wasn’t curved. It looked like a piece of coloured glass from a leadlight window, which wouldn’t be surprising given the number of Federation-era houses in the neighbourhood. However, the odd thing was that I found it lying behind a low retaining wall in the forecourt of a Holden dealership, amid the dirt, ring pulls and weeds. The nearest building from which it could have come was across a four lane road and up the block. How did a piece of leadlight glass come to be so far from any window that might have contained it?


It was interesting, so I put it in my pocket.


A while later, and nearly a kilometre away, I was crossing a major road when I looked down and discovered two more pieces of glass.





Now this is just getting weird, I thought. Had some old building exploded and rained antique glass fragments across the entire suburb?


And a second or two later I worked it out, as I realised that both sites were right next to major intersections. You are such a duh, I told myself, coming up with exploding Federation buildings when the truth is so obvious.


Still, it’s strange that I didn’t see any red or amber glass in these same places.