A fire in Springvale, to which the CFA responds. C’mon, Springvale. What is this, 1960? East of Westall Road isn’t paddocks anymore. Surely it’s time to re-draw the MFB/CFA boundaries?
The metro/country taxi boundaries are similar, aren’t they? Time for an update.
Odd. I found a quarterly magazine that retails for $7, but is $44 per year by subscription?!
What’s with those fake Tintin t-shirts? “Tintin in Vietnam”? They’re not even taking the mickey out of the characters, they’re just making stuff up. Why?
Finally… if you get the opportunity to speak to the world, don’t waste it. Use your canvas wisely. Aim to impart great knowledge. Communicate your ideas to make society better. Say something meaningful.
14 replies on “Some silly things”
Funny that – living in Dandenong North I have been quite used to the CFA being the local brigade. the archaic MFB/CFA brigade can be found on Melway maps if you look hard enough and at the following link:
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/documents/cfa_mfesb_boundary.pdf
So areas like Springvale, Keysborough, Noble Park, Dandenong, Rowville, Knox, Boronia, Bayswater, Ferntree Gully, Edithvale, Carrum, Frankston are all CFA.
Dandenong also lies in the so-called outer suburban taxi boundary
Never mind Springvale was an new suburb in the 1960s and urban development spread along the road and rail corridors to Dandenong and Frankston, much like it does to Cranbourne, Pakenham and Werribee these days
I guess its not too different from infrastructure ending before suburbia does e.g. urban sprawl extending well past places like Broadmeadows, Altona and St Albans rail termini before more recent extensions. The only exception to this was Pakenham which had suburban services since 1975, but was only due to the fact that it was a remnant to the Gippsland electrification. Today suburbia is creeping towards Melton and it still has a country service dressed up with Met tickets.
I heard that story about CFA in Springvale and I thought, surely not. It must be MFB. Also saw the Tintin in Vietnam tee, maybe in Swanston Street. Very odd.
Why not merge the fire services and have a combination of paid and volunteer firepeople according to need across the state?
Hard to define the boundaries of the country and city these days. There is video of the MFB firetrucks charging down the main street of Drouin on 7th February (my parents watched them go down the freeway from a friend’s house on that side of town.)
The band ROOT! Have a song about Sprinvale on their “Surface Paradise” CD (on the bonus CD.) “Springy! Good old Springy!”
I’m in a CFA area but a metro taxi zone.
But the taxi zone doesn’t bear much relation to the urban area – ie Coldstream, Seville and Yuroke are ‘metropolitan’ but Springvale isn’t.
Instead it’s in an ‘outer suburban’ taxi area that looks a lot like the old Zone 3 (ie Frankston and Dandenong were in it but Werribee and Hurstbridge weren’t). And just like Zone 3, it applies as far in as Springvale but didn’t start until Seaford when going south. The main exception is that Ringwood was Zone 3 but is in the metro taxi area.
My guess is where there are big towns (Frankston & Dandenong) that were considered outside metro then these got the outer suburban taxi zone. But where there are no big towns for miles (eg past Lilydale, Craigieburn or Sunbury) then those area went into metro taxi zones.
BTW, Sunbury above should read Werribee. Tom: Maybe there’s been no change as governments would have to pay for what volunteers do for nix now.
And as for a mixture of paid/unpaid, there may be a risk of demarcation disputes, which would be a particular problem for a Labor government.
So governments on both sides have left sleeping dogs lie.
The Springvale CFA is an Integrated Brigade, it has full time paid staff as well as the volunteers. There already is a combination of paid firefighters amongst volunteers across the state and in outer metro Melbourne.
I dunno Daniel, that message on the seat gave me a smile.
Better that than it and everything around it being totally covered in stupid tags, those poor sods clearly have some kind of brain condition…
The immature 4 year old in me giggled at the rude word – at least it put a smile on my face, but of course, it’s completely senseless. I don’t think I’d giggle if my property was defaced… well maybe a bit, depends how hard it would be to fix!
come on!
the anonymous scribbler could have scrawled ‘dick’ or ‘willy’ or worse, but no!
it’s the actual official term.
or maybe it’s his name…. a sort of reversal of the peter, dick or willy thing…
Re CFA in the urban areas. Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo are CFA too, as is all of Victoria except the core of Melbourne, with a spur out to Ringwood (a choice made by that council a long time ago). Where the call rates are high enough there are career fire fighters providing the base manpower, with volunteers called as necessary. If you look at fire station placement, MFEB (note the addition of the E) vs. CFA, you will see that the CFA density is higher. This is mainly historical, each hamlet raised its own brigade, but it now allows a fast enough response time for volunteers to get to the fire station and on to the job in similar times as the more separated MFEB units. Service Delivery Standards require an eight minute response from call to job. A second benefit of the CFA volunteer structure is the ability to meet high peak demands during bushfires. A substantial number of the people manning trucks in the rural surrounds after 7th Feb were from the urban areas.
What’s with those fake Tintin t-shirts? “Tintin in Vietnam”?
I think they might be references to the fake porno Tintin(s) – Tintin in Thailand springs to mind…
I actually own a “Tintin in Vietnam” t-shirt – my sister brought it make for me from Vietnam. I was sure my memory was serving me when I didn’t remember reading that particular one, but what upset me more than that is that the colours are all wrong – suddenly Snowy looks like he should be renamed Sooty
Maybe he was going to write “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword” and started in the middle, but fell asleep? Or “Visit Pen Island” but the first word got painted…erm…nope,I got nothin’.