Yowzers. It’s been 7 years since I bought the house. And it’s been four years since I bought the car. At the time I bought the car, the dealer I bought it from had just paid the rego, so it’s due every August. This year it’s $696.50. Obviously because I bought the car in August, ... [More]
Some people will tell you that rail lines down freeways are a great idea, because “the train overtaking cars is a great advertisement for public transport.” Perth has done this, primarily because it’s been the easiest way of extending the train network. So the Clarkson/Joondalup and Mandurah lines both run down the middle of freeways. ... [More]
One of the problems plaguing public transport in Victoria is the secrecy. Historically the Department of Transport has kept its cards very close to its chest. There’s a lack of information, and a lack of consulation. As some people sitting around a table during a parliamentary inquiry into train services a couple of years ago ... [More]
Categories
Perth day 7: Heading home
All good things come to an end, and so it was with our Perth trip. We had a sleep-in, then packed up our stuff into the car and headed out. The flight wasn’t until lunchtime, but we had one more place to go before heading home: the boys have a strong interest in retro video ... [More]
Categories
Some transport geekery pics
A few pics from recent days. It’s kind of nice that the Tourist “Shuttle” bus gives tourists the thrill of a hook turn Fog at Bentleigh station on Wednesday morning Gleaming rails near Southern Cross Station — on the left you can see the Regional Rail Link under construction Plaques in Melbourne Central (formerly Museum) ... [More]
Tuesday 10th July We’d be heading from Margaret River back to Perth today, so we packed up the serviced apartment and loaded everything into the car, then headed to cave number two of our tour: Lake Cave. Lake Cave has guided tours, and while we waited for it to begin, we pondered the displays and ... [More]
That’s definitely a train icon on that sign, right? (Southern Cross station, Bourke Street bridge) PS. Reminds me a bit of Metro’s “emergency” gate.
I’m not normally one who really watches the Olympics, but I really enjoyed the opening ceremony of the London games. Not the athletes parade of course; apart from the quite inspiring presence of some of the really troubled countries like Sudan and Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, I’m sorry, but I find it a real yawnfest. ... [More]
Categories
Horse and carriage bling
What’s with the bling on the carriages these days? (This is a phone pic, so it’s blurred a bit; it’s actually a row of LEDs.) I’m guessing it’s some kind of safety regulation to ensure they’re visible at night?
Another in a series of posts about Perth PT and how it relates back to Melbourne. Perth’s city centre (and town centres of Fremantle and Joondalup) have CAT buses — Central Area Transit — free services running (reasonably) frequently in loops that people can hop on, hop off to get around. They are very popular; ... [More]
Monday 9th July After breakfast we had a walk around the beach close to our accomodation. It was windy, and pretty bleak to be honest. What we hadn’t seen the night before thanks to it being so dark was that there was a considerable amount of recent fire damage to the surrounding scrub. Apparently the ... [More]
Categories
Current earworm: The Professionals theme
Who remembers The Professionals? I for one was hooked on this as a teenager, despite it being, as Martin Shaw described it, a one-dimensional show. It was a major inspiration for the amateur action video series “STRIKE” which I helped on in high school. It’s amusing to look back on the original Professionals title sequence ... [More]
Sunday 8th July We packed up the car and headed south along the Kwinana Freeway out of Perth. Heading towards Mandurah, my aunt gave me a pronunciation lesson: it’s not pronounced “Mandurah”, it’s pronounced “man-drah”. Eventually we left Perth’s suburbia behind us. Farmland and forest predominated, with the occasional huge billboard, including for something you ... [More]
I don’t normally see much spam thanks to the spam filters, but I did see this funny one a few days ago: IMF APPROVED PAYMENT LETTER. GOOD DAY TO YOU, It is a great pleasure to contact you this day as i have just been appointed the new Chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ... [More]
Saturday 7/7/2012 After running some errands, we were dropped at Cannington Station, which unlike some of the others we’d used, is unstaffed. A small group of smoking teenagers was hanging around the station, but they didn’t get in the way of the actual passengers. I bought tickets for the kids, and pretty soon the train ... [More]
Categories