The Changing Seasons. April 2017

Like every temperate zone region, April is a time of change here in Southern Victoria. Unlike many of my blogging friends, our world is cooling down and the daylight hours are approaching 11 hrs.
April is a time when we are winding up our beach camping. Instead of swimming and spending evenings on the beach, we gather around in coats, play music and sometimes drink too much.
April is popular time for international acts to visit Australia. This is related to the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival at Easter. Many acts add the capital cities to this. We saw Jethro Tull, Patti Smith, and as a duo, Billy Bragg and Joe Henry. All of these concerts had their excellence, with maybe Jethro Tull lagging a little. Having said that, Ian Anderson still is an extraordinary flautist and performer. I’m not sure what you pay in America or Europe for these acts but I am minus 350 bucks after these concerts. I am so lucky I can afford to pay it. I do hanker for the days when a concert ticket was the same cost as an LP. $5. As a kid I went to all the concerts.
Today is Anzac Day, a holiday commemorating the debacle at Gallipoli in 1915. A reposted a photo of my father in uniform on facebook. That is all I could do.
Later on I’ll tune in to the traditional footy match. I have a strong suspicion that my team will lose. That’s OK. It’s just big money making venture these days and I have childhood based allegiance I cannot shake.
Here’s some pics. May will be harder than April. Oh apologies for the sunsets – I like them. Added for Max

Looking towards Sorrento on a blustery day

Heading for our last site on Port Phillip Bay

Sunrise early April Rosebud

Looking NE from Arthur’s Seat

Reflections Port Phillip Bay

Enjoying our friends’ company at the beach.

Tee shirts one week

Coats the next

Yes, more sunsets

After the Jethro Tull concert on Southbank

Before the Patti Smith Concert. I was primed!
The venue just before the Billy Bragg and Joe Henry concert

The West Gate Bridge, Melbourne

As a child I was fascinated by the spread of freeways in my city and state. It was many years later that that I discovered they only solved problems for a short time. In Melbourne at the moment it appears every road is being worked on. By the time they all finish they’ll have to get going again. Until I was 11, there was a wonderful windy and relatively unpolluted creek that flowed near my house. We spent so much time down there. We called it the jungle. It was full of box thorn and thistles but it was all we knew. One day I spoke to a man ramming little wooden pegs in the ground. I asked what he was doing to which he replied ‘very soon there will be a big freeway coming through here’. I was amazed. That was end of the jungle.

About the same time, businesses in Melbourne’s western suburbs, the industrial, ugly side of town, were lobbying for a river crossing near the mouth of the Yarra River. Both sides were seen as an ugly wasteland; perfect for a big bridge. Work for the West Gate Bridge commenced in 1968. This only occurred after a series of dodgy money gatherings and bad tendering, as was found in hindsight. Well into construction, late in 1970, a section of the box girder bridge and a box pylon, collapsed killing 35 construction workers and injuring 18.

West Gate Bridge immediately after collapse. Journalist photograph. I think this photograph is a mirror image.

Of course there was an inquiry and their findings can be perused. Construction eventually resumed. The photograph below was taken by me in 1976

The bridge was completed in 1978. Tolls were introduced, but later scrapped because it could be avoided. It now carries 200000 vehicles per day and a 2nd lower Yarra crossing is close to commencing. 

Some say this bridge competes somehow with the Sydney Harbour Bridge. No way; It’s a big ugly bridge that runs through a fairly ugly part of Melbourne. It has 10 car lanes, but no train. I drive over it about 20 times a year. I’ve walked over it too, to raise funds.

Like all bridges, the Westgate has attracted a lot of suiciders. They did not do anything about this until an imbecile threw his 4 year daughter to her death to get back his wife, in 2009, in front of her brother. This story makes me so emotional. That poor little girl and the poor brother, and mother. I can’t write about it. They installed a fence.

Mt Macedon, 70 km in the background, can be seen here.

Not sure if the fence can be made out.

Under the bridge as we were heading out into the bay pre sunrise in 2008. No fence installed yet. Poor Darcy

Back in 1962, when I was 4, another smaller bridge in the centre of Melbourne cracked due to dodgy engineering. I was a big fan of Zig and Zag, clowns on the telly. They thought they had cracked the bridge when they accidentally dropped a coconut on it. They were gonna get into big trouble. I believed this of course.

King St Bridge