Old photos from March 2009

Here’s another one of my regular posts of ten year old photos.

That month I upgraded to a Nokia N95 phone, which took far better photos than its predecessor, the Nokia 6230i.

Swanston Street opposite the City Square – the old pre-platform tram stops. I’d actually been trying to take a photo of my London Oyster card with the trams in the background. The camera consistently failed to get the Oyster card in focus, but the crowds packing onto the trams are probably more interesting to look at now. (Remember, this was before the Free Tram Zone was instituted.)

At the time I regularly used Glenhuntly Station some days, after dropping the kids at school. Here’s the outbound platform one morning…

…and the level crossing in the afternoon.

Easter was approaching. In Centre Road we see a rather cruel way to treat the Easter bunny.

Supermarket trolley as art? As in the photo above, the level crossing (now gone) is in the background. It also appears at the time that Telstra didn’t take great care to keep their payphones clean. This is also adjacent to the old electorate office of then state member for Bentleigh, Rob Hudson.

A trip to the Yarra Trams control centre, then in Eastern Road, South Melbourne. I’m not sure these days that they’d let me take a photo.

Footscray station, before 2009-2010 pedestrian bridge upgrade, and before the Regional Rail Link added two extra tracks (and resulted in the upgraded bridge being partly demolished so it could be extended). These photos were taken for an April Fools Day gag.

I must have been up early this morning. Hot air balloons over the City.

I went to the Grand Prix. I have little interest in Formula 1 cars – I went to see The Who perform after the race. Here we have trams to the GP departing from outside Southern Cross Station.

I wandered around the GP circuit waiting for the concert to start. I’d have to admit the cars are impressive from an ear-splittingly-loud and very fast perspective.

The Who was excellent.

While the tram shuttles back into the City were very good, those heading outwards were less impressive (this is St Kilda Junction), and the rest of the network was running its standard poor Sunday night frequencies, so I had to wait ages for a train home. The next day I got this point into Hansard.