Archive for January, 2012

Property developers and Melbourne’s Chinese New Year Festival

Each year Melbourne’s holds a Chinese New Year Festival, and for the Year of the Dragon things were no different, with the streets of Chinatown being blocked off on January 29 to make way for the festivities. All of the traditional Chinese New Year attractions were there, but a few more commercial ones.

Lion dance outside a Melbourne restaurant for Chinese New Year

Melbourne’s trains in ‘the good old days’?

Welcome to Melbourne’s railway network: do you sometimes think things used to be better in ‘the good old days’? That pushing your way through crowded platforms to get home is something new? In reality, the situation has been up the creek without a paddle for decades…

Crowded railway platform at Flinders Street Station, 1960

Three generations of Melbourne ticketing

The core of Melbourne’s railway network is the City Loop, circling the Hoddle Grid and serving three underground stations. Having opened to passengers in 1981, during the past 30 years of operation three different methods of ticket checking have been used to ensure passengers have paid their way. So lets take a look at them…

Parliament North Concourse in 1985 (Weston Langford collection)

2011 RACV Board election results

Following up from my RACV board election post from back in October 2011, here are the results! Turns out they were released a few months ago, seems even I didn’t notice…

Melbourne’s abandoned skyscraper

If you frequent the west end of Melbourne’s CBD, then you might have noticed this nondescript looking office building during your travels. Known as Communications House, this 21-storey building is located at 199 William Street on the north-west corner of the intersection with Little Bourke Street, opposite the Supreme Court of Victoria. However if you stop and look through the windows, one finds an abandoned foyer covered with years of dust. So how does an entire skyscraper lie empty for over a decade?