On the public record
I think I might have out-done myself this time.
Last month I represented the PTUA at a senate hearing into Commonwealth investment in public transport.
During questions, the topic of public transport for special events came up, and as I had the night before been to such an event, I drew on that personal experience in one of my answers, all of which naturally has gone into the hearing record*.
CHAIR [Senator Glenn Sterle] — I find it absolutely amazing — in fact, I find it gobsmacking — that you can exit the MCG with 100,000 people and within an hour it is a ghost town.
…Mr Bowen — That is right. The money has been put into public transport to make it work extremely well for special events — big sporting events, concerts and all those sorts of things that Melbourne does really well. To give an example, I went to a concert after the grand prix last night at Albert Park. That was a huge crowd.
CHAIR — How were The Who?
Mr Bowen — I do like The Who. I am not so keen on the racing cars but I like the music, so I went for that. The crowd all, after the concert, swarmed out of Albert Park. They were cleared very quickly out from the tram stops surrounding Albert Park. A tram, again, can carry up to 200 people. That moves crowds not quite as well as heavy rail but certainly very quickly. You can just imagine the nightmare if they allowed parking there — the space it would take up and the time it would take to get those people out. Those special tram services moved people away from Albert Park very quickly, but they quickly broke down, so to speak, a few kilometres out. The special services provided were really good, but for people going a bit beyond where the special services go — out to the suburbs, and in my own case I was heading back out to Malvern to catch a train home — there were no special services at all. The big crowds were certainly taken away from Albert Park but they did not get all the way home, and they had long waits ahead of them, in some cases, to get all the way home. Melbourne public transport does clear crowds very well but, again, the lack of a complete cohesive network running at all times of day means that it does fail in some cases.
It’s like blogging… via Hansard.
- *The transcript, just released, is still in draft form, and contains some minor errors.
- Channel 7 story from the day of the hearing.
Pyromania
There’s a cold going round the family. I hope I’m on the tail end of it now, but it’s rotten. I feel fine 85% of the time, but every hour or so there’s a period of almost uncontrollable coughing, caused by an itchy throat that can’t be soothed by man nor beast nor Strepsil. (Not even the rocket-powered menthol and eucalyptus ones.)
That’s enough to have kept me at home for the last two working days, as I’d rather not inflict the office with my hacking cough.
Going and helping with a burn-off up on the farm on Sunday probably didn’t help. But it was certainly interesting to a city boy like me.
It wasn’t fuel reduction, but apparently to prepare for the next season’s sowing. After getting a permit to burn, and warning all the neighbours, we headed out with a tractor pulling a chain with a plough thing loaded with burning straw, and a smallish bulldozer with a water tank and pump, ready to put the fire out if it got out of control.
It didn’t — the fire breaks had been prepared well, and there was just the right amount of breeze to keep it going but not let it go too far.
So while we were on standby for fire-fighting, in practice it just meant standing about chatting (me taking photos), and every so often climbing on the back of the trailer with the water tank to be towed off after the fire-lighting tractor, trying not to get in the way of too much of the water splashing around out of the top of the tank as we bumped along.
The smoke got everywhere, of course. We tried to stay out of it, but it went right through our clothes, which all needed washing.
After a couple of hours, a fair bit of ground had been burnt off, ready for the next stage of preparation for planting, and we headed back to the house for some well-earned afternoon tea.
Three-sided street cricket
It turns out there are actual documented rules for street cricket, which is popular on the sub-continent.
But at my place we’ve got our own version, which has evolved into a limited overs format that suits a short game after dinner for the three of us, though of course occasionally neighbours will join in.
6 balls per over. If there’s only three of us playing, this means the wicketkeeper and bowler swap after each over. The “pitch” is between the middle of our driveway and the middle of our neighbour’s driveway.
To make it fun and ensure everyone gets a good go at batting, each batsman gets at least two overs when they can’t go out. During these overs the batsman also can’t get run out; if this happens then the run doesn’t count.
On or after the 12th ball, the batsman can go out.
Overs for each batsman are limited according to the length allowed for the game. Four overs in total, with three players is about a half-hour game.
If the ball is knocked into a temporarily or permanently inaccessible spot (eg down a drain, into a hedge) then the batsman may earn a maximum of three runs, but he has to run them. (This whole game is to get all of us to have more exercise, so it’s not an automatic score.)
Cars stop play temporarily, of course.
I think that was all the rules. We don’t do LBW or wides or no-balls, at least not yet.
The result from last Thursday night’s game: Jeremy 10 runs, Daniel 8 runs, Isaac 6 runs. I think we were all bowled out; I don’t remember.
Brief things
Haven’t blogged for a bit, so here’s a brief catch-up.
I helped Tony and Rae and family move last week. The inevitable comment that pops up when geeks move house: packing the moving van is like Tetris. Of course, when you get a full row of boxes, they don’t disappear and make more space…
The kids and I watched the early (9:15pm) NYE fireworks a short distance away from the action — Richmond Station platform 4, which unlike the city centre, was not crowded at all, apart from half-a-dozen Connex security guys also watching. They said their shift was from 5pm to 3am. The view was certainly better than from the park near home, where we watched last year, though of course not as good as being in the thick of it.
My Wii fitness level has been up and down, all over the place. The best: 28, the worst: 56. Marita, it turns out, is very good at Wii boxing, knocking-out virtual people with some enthusiasm.
I’ve been playing Scrabble via Facebook with a few friends, mostly local. I was challenged to a game by a friend in Canada, but stupidly, the North American Scrabble is only available in the US and Canada, while the one we have in Australia is only available outside North America… so much for the global village.
Rose would have been 30 on Friday, and the family gathered to pay their respects. It was doubly sobering to see that in the Nagambie cemetery, she now has a neighbour, apparently a local woman in her 40s who also died in a car accident.
On a happier note, the Doctor Who Christmas special will air in Australia on January 25th. You can watch the first couple of minutes here.
A Doctor Who spoiler follows…
Read more
Christmas
Happy Boxing Day.
Well, we had a pretty good Christmas. The haul’s headliner was a Nintendo Wii — actually bought for the kids (to their surprise and delight), but which has already proven itself to be a helluva lot of fun for me too. A bunch of smaller presents too, and not a dud among them.
We spent most of the day at my sister’s place. The weather was perfect for sitting eating lunch outside, and in the afternoon some of us took a dip in the pool (which is to be removed eventually, so it’s good to enjoy it while it’s there). Actually it wasn’t quite warm enough for the pool but it was nice anyway… especially when served a cup of tea!
My sister
My sister Susannah is lovely. Kind and funny. Thoughtful and smart.
Full of empathy when it matters — always up for a whingefest session on the phone, and understands what it’s like to be time-poor.
Her kids are nice, her husband Adrian’s a dude.
She’s successful — she’s made her business work, they seem to be going great guns.
And it’s her 36th birthday today.
Happy birthday Sis.
Rose
From everything I saw and heard of her, Marita’s sister Rose was smart, kind, feisty, funny, and happy with her job and her life.
She died on Friday in a car accident near Shepparton, aged 29.
Just tragic.
Rosemary, 1979-2008
Rest In Peace
Update: Herald Sun notices
My dad and the trains
When I was a kid, my dad would take us to Camberwell Civic Centre every April or so, to see the huge model train exhibition they had there. We’d wander around for a couple of hours and I would dream that one day I’d have a really big, detailed train set.
Early on I had Lego trains; the ones with the blue rails, and coveted the mains electric ones, which I saw in a foreign language Lego catalogue that snuck into a Lego set I got. But I had the push and battery variety: the 171 goods train and 182 passenger train. Those red and blue couplings taught me about magnetism.
By my teens I had a handful of HO model trains; a mix of Hornby and Lima trains, including I think a Hornby Trans-Australian engine (have no idea if it was historically accurate), and a Lima Indian Pacific set. At the time we were living in Inkerman Road, St Kilda, in a rented duplex, and there was a bungalow out the back which I got to use for the trains. But I never did get around to building a proper layout.
A bit later I got the 1980s era Lego electric trains “Ideas book” courtesy of my UK uncle. A year or two later the trains went on the market in Australia, and although by that point I was arguably too old for Lego trains, I saved up my spending money from my parttime job and ended up with a 7740 Intercity express, and a 7730 Steam freight train. Both sets had numerous stickers for different operators you could choose to stick on the sides of the trains. Vicrail (by then defunct) was included, but I chose the German Railways logo, because its DB initials matched mine.
My sister and I had a Lego town built up with loads of buildings, vehicles, people, and way more train services than a town of that size probably deserved.
I’m sure a lot of these trains were at least partly funded by my dad (who also funded the computers when I got interested in those.)
Dad also took us to the Railway Museum at Williamstown regularly. We’d climb in and out of the trains and run around like maniacs and look at the displays there.
And he let me read his copies of newsletters from a mob he had joined, called the Train Travellers Association, which in 1984 became the PTUA. In his younger days, he’d been interested in various aspects of activism, though I don’t think he was active in the TTA.
The other week I took the kids to the model railway exhibition at Caulfield racecourse. Quite good. Lots to look at.
The advertising said it was the largest in the state. I was chatting to one of the blokes there. I wondered if it was the same one that used to be at Camberwell every April or so when I was a kid. Yes, same one. So there you go.
And they still have the U-Drive, where for a small fee they let the kids drive a couple of model trains for a little while. In my youth, I think they were just plain engines. Nowadays (perhaps inevitably) they’re Percy and Thomas.
We haven’t been to the Railway Museum since last year, I think, but now that the warm weather is coming back, I’m sure it’ll happen again in the near future.
Our parents have funny influences over us. Bits of them appear in us, and obviously some stuff we continue passing down the line to our kids.
In my case, I didn’t end up becoming a hard-core train enthusiast, nor do I have a bunch of model trains. But clearly aspects of his interests have popped up in me, and I wonder what of me will pass down into my kids.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.
