Broken

This is a week of broken things...

1,000s of Trees around Darwin

Broken

Our old car (crashed last night)

Broken

Front sliding door...(came off it's tracks tonight)

Broken

The tap I fixed last month... (leaking again)

 Broken

Washing machine (Blew up with a bang in a cloud of smoke today, causing power outage)

 Broken (Domestic staff currently on strike!)

Snap Deck on my Xtracycle

Broken! (and a little bit soggy after the recent rain)


Not sure what it all means but I'm waiting for a sign!

We only want a little shade!

(Once a shady avenue)

If you ride your bicycle along McMillans Rd in Jingli/Moil NT. Then you've probably noticed that all the lovely shade trees have been knocked down. My ride home from work has been so much hotter thanks to the DPI's new landscaping project.

OBSTRUCTION: When I asked why, I was advised that the trees obstructed peoples vision... I mistakenly thought that they were referring to road safety and other traffic but as I ride by that way every day I know that there never was any such obstruction. However with the trees there the Bottle Shop/Hotel and motel were slightly hidden from the road... Is it possible they cut down the trees so that traffic can be directed to the drive through bottle shop more easily?

The form of these trees was quite uniform, narrow trunks with a spreading canopy of leaves above (kind of like big umbrellas). I'm not saying they weren't an obstruction at all because I believe they were blocking particular things. Firstly the row of tree trunks would have acted like bollards along a busy roadway... If a car had lost control and jumped the curb it is quite likely one of those trees would have stopped it from smashing into traffic, pedestrian, cyclists or property on the other side. The other obstruction the trees caused was far more likely to affect cyclists and pedestrians... The canopies of those trees obstructed the harsh rays of the afternoon sun from frying the skin and brains of those who traveled along the bike path. If you ask anyone who uses the shared bicycle/pedestrian path they will tell you how nice it is to have some shade... They will also tell you how pissed they are now that the shade they relied on has been removed!

The signs say 'landscaping in progress', I can't wait to see the end results of what they have done to our landscape! I can only imagine, greener grass and a manicured water intensive, 'Prettification' but NO Shade!. I wonder if they'll have to declare the amount of carbon they are releasing through the chipping of those trees?

(Stumped!)

(Marked for the Axe)

Thanks for nothing DPI. Please don't call the work you are doing 'improvement'.

Apple trees in suburbia

Recently I saw an article about councils down in Melbourne coming around to the idea of urban food production to the point that they are talking about planting fruit trees on curbside nature strips.
What an awesome idea! I sometimes think back to when I was a kid and our neighborhood still had elements of the rural area that it had been. I remember the creek at the bottom of our street, the open paddocks that were all around, and a horse that would sometimes wander into our front yard.
Our area had been old farming properties and there were remnants of those places that still remained long after most of the land had been converted into house blocks or roads.
I remember the old open aqueduct that used to be full of water and visiting the remaining cow paddocks to collect manure. There was an abandoned farm on a large patch of open land that eventually became the Northern Ring Road. And there were old plum pear and apple trees that in many cases wound up fenced into peoples yards or bulldozed.

Lots of things have changed but some still remain my memories are strong and I miss some of those old things. So many people have come and gone from that place where I grew up. I wonder if any of them notice the changes or the remnants of things that existed before they arrived.

Apple tree survivor of many changes

A year or so ago I was walking down the main road of my home town and noticed one of those special remnants from the time before. It was a single apple tree perched on the tiniest of scraps of land between a busy road that has undergone some widening through the years and a railway line that has been excavated to several meters below the surface of the land.
Ever since I saw that tree my mind has often drifted back to what my town was like when I was a kid. I wondered about the farms and the farmers, their animals and their lives. As I got older and roamed further I often wonder also about what and who was there before them. I explored and made all sorts of discoveries. Old gold mines abandoned quarries, discarded machinery all those kinds of things. Although I dreamed and I wondered I never found anything of the people who were there before them all. The people who must have lived around and loved the river that I swam and fished in. The people who would have known all the waterholes and special spots I liked to think I'd discovered. There were no obvious signs that they'd been there at all. It was only my wondering that seemed to give them any life at all...

When I go back there I look for that apple tree and wonder how many apple trees had there been. Who remembers them? How many are left..? Who notices them? I hope someone does. These things are special to me. Amid all the changes; the concrete, bitumen and steel, that tree is still there. It might survive long enough to see more changes. It could bloom one day to find a street full of apple trees have sprouted, and the songs of the old people might be heard.
Is there yet time for these life giving fruits?
(another rant!)