Stuck!

Container truck stuck under the railway bridge on Wollongong Rd, Arncliffe. 5pm Sunday 21 September.

Mind The Gap

Anyone who has travelled on The Tube in London will be familiar with announcements exhorting passengers to "Mind The Gap". I was sitting in the lower deck of the train on the way to work and was eye level at Sydenham with one of the stencilled platform signs you find on Sydney's railway platforms.

Five ways you can tell you are in Melbourne, not Sydney

Part Five: Trams, of course!

The most obvious saved for last.
Sydney's last tram ran in 1961. Lines had begun closing in 1939, line by line.
By contrast, Melbourne was sensible and reatined its tram network, a great form of public transport, which makes Melbourne easy to get around, particularly the inner and middle distance suburbs. Like most cities which have grown phenomenally in the past few decades, public transport has not kept pace with suburban sprawl.

Five ways you can tell you are in Melbourne, not Sydney

Part Four: Hook Turns

To accommodate trams, and allow them to move smoothly through intersections, some of Melbourne's city streets require motorists turning right to move to the far left to wait to turn. (Don't forget we drive on the left, so normally would position ourselves in the centre, or just left of centre, of the road to turn right). It's easy once you get the hang of it, but the first few times can be a bit unnerving.

Five ways you can tell you are in Melbourne, not Sydney

Part Two: Easy-access stations
Aligned with yesterday's level crossing, is the fact that access to Melbourne train stations is usually via a minimal number of steps, or a ramp. Contrast this with my local station in Sydney, which you can only get to the platforms by going up a whole heap of stairs, and down another heap of stairs. Makes it really hard for mums with prams, anyone with physical challenges, older people and so on.

Five ways you can tell you are in Melbourne, not Sydney

Part One: Level Crossings
Suburban railway "level crossings" don't exist in Sydney (maybe there are one or two?). There is always a road overpass or underpass. They remain very much part of the Melbourne suburban landscape. Bells and lights start, the boom gates come down, and the pedestrian gates across the tracks close automatically.

Apparently Melbourne stopped its program of replacing level crossings in the early 1970s, to divert money to construction of the Eastern Freeway.

Railway Square

The lovely old building is a former post office, now an apartment hotel. Taken through the glass canopy in Railway Square, a major bus stop on the southern edge of the central business district (CBD).

Also, I'd like to apologise for not getting round to visit as many Theme Day photos as I would have liked. Things have been absolutely mad at work - long days (and into nights). I hope to catch up in the next little while.

Billy Elliott

Off to see this production tonight.
Do you like musical theatre? What is your favourite form of the performing arts?

Ferry, Sydney Harbour from Cremorne Point

Mind The Gap!

I like the way the station and platform were reflected in the glass covering the poster.

Moto-Beatles

Johnstons creek channel and viaduct

A stormwater channel and the old goods railway viaduct at Jubilee Park, Glebe, which now forms part of the Sydney light rail (tram) line.

Berowra Waters Car ferry

The ferry runs 24 hours a day except between noon and 2.30pm on the second Tuesday of the month.

Crossing the river shown in yesterday's photo.

Berowra Waters

View from the road down to Berowra Waters and the free car ferry across Berowra Creek, an anabranch of the Hawkesbury River.

Back on the ground in Sydney

I love flying but I also like being back on the ground. From these little planes a bus takes you the couple of hundred metres to the terminal, I love the little "dust buster" style vaccuum cleaner ready on the ground for cleaning the interiorof the plane.

Up in the air

Last week I flew from Sydney to Narrabri, a town of about 7, 500 people about 600 kms northwest of Sydney. The plane was a Dash-8. Today all Dash-8 Series 400s were grounded for mechanical checks after one had an emergency landing in Lithuania due to a faulty landing gear, and one crashed in Denmark a few days ago.

In the next couple of days I'll show you some of the Northwest plains from the air. This shot is amazingly green - crops planted after some great winter rains. Unfortunatley, 71% of NSW is drought-declared, and there hasn't been anything by way of follow-up rain, so many crops are threatened.

The Flying Kangaroo: Qantas Dash-8s

Australians overseas often look for the familiar kangaroo-tailed Qantas planes at foreign airports (usually huge 747s). Here in Sydney is part of the fleet of domestic regional planes - the dehavilland Dash-8, a twin-engined, medium range, turboprop aircraft. I really like flying in them. I've also flown in them in Canada.

Do you have a favourite aircraft?

Domestic

Today I've flown north of Sydney to Coffs harbour, for work. I caught the train to the airport. It's a sparkling new station, completely under-utilised. The reason? It was built as a public-private partnership and costs an exorbitant amount to get off at the station. While the railway line and trains are just a part of the public transport system, the "station access fee" provides a premium payment for the private station owners. If there are more than one of you travelling, it is cheaper to take a taxi. Rather than encouraging people to take the train, it's a real disincentive.

Sydney has several highly unpopular pieces of public-private partnership infrastructure, includign many toll roads and tunnels. All because governments refuse to invest directly for the future, and the obsession with a "private is better" ideology. They have been shown over and over again to be very unpopular and inefficient when they collapse and the government has to buy them out anyway.

I live only two stations from the airport, and when I travel alone for work it is about the same price as a taxi to catch the train. I actually prefer it.

Do you have PPPs in your part of the world? What is public reaction?

For all your motor scooter needs, Newtown

I love those little Moorish-like domes on top of the building. And the art deco style casement windows.

Suburban train, Tempe

No, I didn't have to stand by the rails to get this shot! At Tempe station, there is a low fence at the bottom of the station steps. I realised one day as a train swooshed past how close you are to them, so I took advantage and waited for a photo op. It's quite unusual at Sydney suburban stations to get this close when not actually on a platform.