How to find the transport mural at Southern Cross Station
The gigantic transport mural was perhaps one of the best features of the old Spencer Street station. By Harold Freedman, it depicts the first century of Victoria’s transport — from 1835 to 1935. It was commissioned by the state government in 1973, and unveiled in 1978.
Following the rebuilding and (pointless) renaming, it’s been hidden away in the shopping centre where it’s virtually invisible to most people. (But hey, at least it has been retained on public display.)
Here’s how to find it.
Firstly make your way to the Bourke Street end of the station, either via the platforms if you’re coming off a train, or via the escalators.
Go into the shopping centre formerly known as DFO, now called “Spencer Street”.
Ignore the shops (both open and vacant) and go all the way to the end. Yeah it’s a long way — more than a full city block. (If you’re coming from Lonsdale Street or further north, you can enter part the way along at an entrance at the Spencer/Lonsdale Street intersection.)
Once you reach the end, look up, above the shops — there it is.
Opposite the mural, in a spot where most wouldn’t notice it, is a stairway (with wheelchair lift) to a viewing area. Make your way up…
Behold, the mural in all its glory.
Note the top section is private transport, in the middle public transport, and at the bottom is commercial. This, and the history of the mural, is detailed in the helpful explanatory panel.
Update: The mural is included in this Melbourne history app for iTunes and Android.
A little experiment in visual art
When I visit the data centre for work, I get my photo taken for a visitor pass. It’s often on a Friday — casual clothes day. The camera (and/or the printer) is black & white, low-resolution, and slightly awkwardly placed.
For some reason, the visitor passes have been accumulating in my desk drawer. Here are the pictures from some of them, stuck together.
They were a little repetitive, so I’ve only included a dozen of them, and I’ve applied some colours to the second row, and on the third row I’ve tried a few visual effects in Paint.Net.
Not exactly Warhol, is it. The other thing it reminds me a little of is the cover of A Hard Day’s Night. Ah well, something different, anyway.
Metro mosaic
The mural at Patterson station that I noted some time ago has now been completed and officially opened.
It includes a rather neat mosaic version of the Metro logo:
(zoom)
More faces contributed by (mostly) local community groups and schools have been added. Note Bender from Futurama in there.
(zoom)
Apparently they got sponsorship from Bostick for sticking everything to the walls!
It certainly brightens up what was a dreary old underpass. Well done to Pamela Irving, who organised the project.
Hidden gems
There’s vandalism, and then there’s street art.
Some have trouble distinguishing them, but for me, it’s not hard to see that these hidden gems in Finlay Lane (off Little Lonsdale Street, near Queen Street) are clearly the latter.
Well worth a look, if you’re passing (and you can find it!)
The surrealist tram
(Probably my favourite lightbulb joke when they were all the rage was:
Q. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly coloured machine tools.)
Solar Equation
Solar Equation, by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, part of Federation Square’s The Light In Winter, is a simulation of the sun, “100 million times smaller than the real thing”.
Here’s how it looks in daytime, when inactive:
At dusk it fires up:
