R was doing his volunteer job today collecting up oldies in a mini bus and taking them to a venue for a meal and play on the poker machines, this time to Milanos in Brighton. It is harder than it sounds. He has to catch the tram to St Kilda, pick up the mini bus, collect all the oldies from different addresses, eight of them, including their walking frames. After lunch and some social time, the process reverses and this time he had to leave the mini bus at his volunteer work place, which means a tram into the city and another tram home. He left home at 9.30 and returned at 4.30.
I am alone. What to do? I did such a nerdy thing, taking a train ride for no other reason than I could and wanted to see how the train went over the new bridge over Kororoit Creek Road in our west after seeing the bridge from the road last Sunday.
But first lunch in Centre Place in the city and then a haircut. Mamasan at the tiny cafe greeted me warmly. Where is your friend? Light rain was falling, so unusually, I sat inside. Normally I don't really want to talk too much to hairdressers when my hair is being cut. The man who cut my hair did so the last time. I suspect he is gay, a bit younger than me and is garrulous. I used to feel terror that one day this chatty bloke would cut my hair, but he is just so nice and we have great conversations about everything and anything.
Off to Flinders Street Station. Wow, these new passenger information screens are amazing, including the animated display indicating the direction of travel of trains in the City Loop. They change direction and anyone who has full knowledge of this has my admiration. It is to your benefit if you know which coloured line you need to use.
Sometimes something really interesting happens on trains, or there are some really
hot guys interesting people travelling, but not really this day. My only people observation was that you can never look elegant when lifting a heavy suitcase from a train to the platform, even if at almost equal height. You will always look like a tourist, unsure of themselves and struggling.
The train was crawling along before the bridge crossing. But after the oncoming train passed by at the passing loop, suddenly the train accelerated, and while going over the bridge was not quite a Big Dipper experience, it was good zoom over by the train. For the first time travelling on the train in that area, I did not see a rabbit. I caught the ex Werribee express train back to town, faster, not as interesting, and I had enough sitting on hard Comeng train seats. I saw so many train lines, minor, major and closed branching off.
Marcus Wong's websites are the go to place to find out.
The screen was not really pink. Camera error. It is just brilliant.
You can see the dotted City Loop moving image, well not moving in a photo, but that is how it is displayed.
Everyone one of these wagons (is that what we call them in Australia?) was tagged.
They probably look better with tags than without.
Here I go, over the double track Kororoit Creek Road bridge.
On the way back to town this is the Neo200 building in Spencer Street. Like the Docklands Lacrosse highrise apartment building, the cladding is flammable, and while it didn't quite go up like a Hindu widow, in the dark line of the building, you can see some boarded up areas where the fire was, travelling upward, conducted by the flammable cladding. Residents are still locked out two weeks later. Just like with other combustible cladding fires, you could see the molten metal falling to the ground. How on earth combustible cladding was ever allowed to put on the exterior of highrise buildings is beyond me. No apartment owner should have to pay for rectification. This is a result of Federal, State and Local government undoing of 'red tape' and letting developers run rampant, just as was the terrible cladding fire at
Grenfell Tower in London, which without a sprinkler system and compromised fire suppression systems , led to the deaths of tens of people. Fortunately, so far as I know, any building of any sort of height in Australia must have a sprinkler system, and as long as they are maintained, work very well at preventing the spread of fire. If it is not law yet, sprinklers really need to be installed on balconies.
Neo200 looks like it is a rather cheaply constructed building, perhaps with some very small apartments. I have been into a couple of 'one bedroom' apartments in similar apartment blocks. There are only lounge room windows and the bedroom is a room but without a normal door, just a sliding screen, no windows. The bathrooms are good. The lounge room is tiny, with a couch just a metre or so away from the tv screen. Property developers were allowed to include the kitchen space as living space, which led to such tiny lounge areas, but from what I know, this has or will be stopped in Victoria and the minimum lounge area cannot include the kitchen area.
