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I have cable

The bush, the cable, and a skulking Telstra vanIn my front garden next to the verandah is a humungous bush, featuring bright purple leaves flowers and green branches with soft thorns. It’s growing, Triffid-like, out of control, and I regularly have to take the hedge clippers to it to prevent its spread blocking (or at least making awkward) access to the front door. It’s a good method of stress relief actually. Hack! Hack! Hack!

Attached to the verandah is a cable which goes through the top middle of the bush, up to a power pole out on the street. It appears to me (and to a Telstra bloke who knocked on the door last week to ask something) to be an OptusVision cable, perhaps a remnant of a previous tenant’s penchant for paying lots of money for dozens of channels but still nothing to watch. The only other visible cable to the street seems to be the power, which is thankfully a good deal higher, out of reach of the bush.

As the bush has grown over the months, its grip on the OptusVision cable has started to drag it down. At its lowest point it’s only about 2 metres off the ground, and I’m guessing that sooner or later, the bush’s pull on it will eventually either cause it to snap or break the connection at one end of the other.

I had a closer look at the bush yesterday, while I was trimming it back a tad. The cable goes through a very dense part of it, and I’m guessing major tree surgery would have to be performed to ease the pressure on the cable. Obviously since it’s for a service I don’t use, my care factor is a long way below 100%. But if and when the cable succumbs, it could cause problems, so I wonder on whose shoulders responsibility rests: the tenant, the agent or owner, or Optus?

There were two more Telstra blokes skulking about in the street when I got home tonight. We had a little conference and the three of us were in consensus: I should ring OptusVision and ask them to confirm that it’s their cable. And to see if their care factor is any higher than mine.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

6 replies on “I have cable”

From the photo it looks like the Triffid is trying to pull the power line down.

BTW I was so wrong about what makes the bollards sink into the ground in Cambridge. Taxis and other vehicles authorised to enter the bollard-ringed area get fitted with transponders. The CCTV is just meant to be a crime-detterent.

I remember reading that the phrase “heard it through the grapevine” was a reference to the original telegraph network in the states, which used to sag and reminded someone of, well a grapevine. No idea if this is one of those ingenious backward explanations.

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