Saturday 15 February 2014

THE ORIGINAL CITY LOOP

THE ORIGINAL CITY LOOP
This article grew from a very long road trip one Sunday from Boronia to Reservoir to visit the wife’s parents then off to Chadstone to visit my Mum. Coincidentally each one of us lives very close to a railway station.

When I was but a youngster living in Jordanville (a suburb swallowed by Chadstone that no longer exists except in the hearts of those who once lived there) Though not isolated, it did seem to take a long time or a lot of mucking around to get to from where we were in the South East to the other sides of town; even a trip that would be considered a short 20 minute drive these days.
Living on the Glen Waverley rail line meant getting to the city was relatively easy, though heading the other way was pointless because back in the 1970s Glen Waverley terminated at Springvale Rd and after that was vacant land and orchards.
I remember when VFL Park opened, for quite a few years we traveled in buses on dirt roads to get there. If we needed to go to somewhere like the races at Caulfield or the Dandenong Market we could go to Oakleigh rail station but only if the buses were running. Which they didn’t on Sundays, after 3PM on Saturdays or after 6.30PM most week days of the year. So if you were planning to go somewhere with linking transport, chances were that you mightn’t be able to get home the same way. Going to the beach meant going all the way into Richmond and changing trains. Unless you had a car, (which we didn’t) life was one long journey. Cars were still quite the luxury. Living in a Housing Commission area, most houses didn’t even have driveways and on some Sundays you wouldn’t even see a car for nearly half an hour on busy Huntingdale road. But it wasn’t always like this. Imagine if you lived in Chadstone and had just been accepted into Latrobe Uni after a successful VCE year, you’re 18, haven’t got the 120 hours up and don’t look like it’s going to happen for a while and if you do get your licence the prospect of buying a car is still not an option. What if you’re a young hipster from Reservoir and you would like to visit the Shopping behemoth that is Chadstone Shopping Centre but your Green living ways and environmental friendly lifestyle means you avoid driving and rather catch public transport.
Good luck and take more than a cut lunch.
Could you imagine a railway that could get you from Oakleigh via Chadstone onto the Lilydale line just before Camberwell up through Kew then onto the Hurstbridge line where you could go to Latrobe Uni (or very near it) even Victoria Park or the Zoo. It did exist, once.
It was the Outer Circle rail line and it was fully functional before the turn of LAST century. Though Melbourne was founded in 1835 it grew quickly.
Thanks to the1850s Gold Rush the city blossomed to be the jewel of the Southern hemisphere. Melbourne was the Dubai of its time. During the years between 1850 and 1880 Melbourne had become the richest city in the Empire and only behind London in size. A lot of this growth can be contributed to the sudden influx of wealth, population, need for services and resources from the Gold rush but there was also a good deal of self interest and corruption from land owners and Government officials. Our founding fathers had foresight, you just have to look at our excellent reservoir and catchment system that meant we had a lot less of the serious outbreaks of contagious diseases that Sydney had at the same time in history and is still the envy of many major cities of the world of the same size, with a less forgiving climate.
The also knew how to move people around and a railway system was the most efficient means of moving the growing populace and freight that sustained it.
By the year 1900 railways could take you to almost anywhere in the state, with Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo having their own central systems. So progressive was the system that some had already been closed down as inefficient.
Before being united by the Government the original railway system was split in Melbourne with three different terminals, Flinders St, Spenser St and Princes Bridge. All joined now but back in the 1850s they spread out in different directions to service the city.
The Inner city circle and Outer city circle lines were products of this and where built to bypass existing routes to free up lines like the Lilydale line so they could be used to freight in much needed firewood supplies. The resulting of these manic boom times saw a depression in the late 19th Century which brought an end to the land boom and a slow down of the urban sprawl which put a premature end to sections of the Outer circle line. Lines that and stations built back before 1900 but dismantled or not in use today include:

What was, what is and what will probably never be,

The Healesville and Warburton lines after Lilydale.
The Kew extension that went to Kew Junction.
The branch line that ran into Mont Park Mental asylum, what is now part of Latrobe Uni.
The Rosstown railway which run from Oakleigh to Elsternwick through Murrumbeena .
The Inner circle which linked the Zoo (Royal Park)ran past Princes Park on to Fitzroy (the old Brunswick Rd Oval).
The Outer Circle which ran from Fairfield along the Chandler Rd bridge through Kew, Deepdene junctioned at East Camberwell on through what is still the Alamein line to join up with Darling station over Waverley Rd and through the land that was to be Chadstone Shopping Centre on to Oakleigh.
The St Kilda to Windsor line.
Springvale Cemetery Branch line  that ran from Springvale station around the original Sandown race track and on to the Cemetery.
The Mornington extension from Frankston.
Stations that no longer exist but still have railways are Lynbrook, Lyndhurst, Cranbourne North, Langwarrin. Very heavily populated area that grew in the late 80s and 90s, ironically these stations all shut in the 1980s
Most of the lines can be seen on your current Melways as parks or walking trails. Some of the stations are little but parks with retaining walls where the platforms once stood. There is a wonderful aerial map available on the Melbourne University site taken in 1945 which shows many of these railways still running or not yet dismantled.
http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/maps/map-historical.html


Recent articles in the Age have sparked debate over rail links to Chadstone, some say a tunnel others a light rail to cater for the proposed 200 million dollar expansion of the centre. This in turn has brought attention to the old outer circle railway and how our forefathers got it right. New railways are a bit of novelty these days with the idea of a rail link to Tullamarine on every election wish list for decades only to be abandoned due to cost concerns. But an East West tunnel is an ongoing project. After the 60s Railways had the opportunity to be extended further out especially to growth areas beyond Glen Waverly and Rowville but a new transport innovation took hold and the Freeways and associated works popped up everywhere with the Mulgrave and Eastern freeways, the Westgate bridge the Western Ring Rd and eventually City Link and East Link circling the city in the last 40 years and our traffic still hasn’t improved let alone getting from Chadstone to Reservoir efficiently by car or public transport.
It’s ironic that most of Melbourne’s rail infrastructure was in place by the 1920s and was starting yo be dismantled in the 1950s just before we started to really need it.

Sites to Visit
For more info and some wonderful early photographs
OuterCircleLine
The Outer Circle Line Facebook page
Weston Langford Photography
RailwayStations.com - The Outer Circle Line
Wikipedia


 References
The Age Dec 24 2011 The proposed $500 million expansion of Chadstone shopping centre will create gridlock on the roads 
The Age NOV 11 2012 A NEW train line connecting the Glen Waverley and Dandenong railway lines would stop at Chadstone Shopping Centre 
The Argus Oct 14 1873 Report on Northcote public meeting in favour of adopting Outer circle railway line 
The Argus 20 Nov 1877 Report on Boroodara Council Meeting regarding Outer Circle League Alan Davies www.crikey.com/theurbanist With the threat of climate change and peal oil hanging over our head, why can’t we replicate the achievements of the nineteenth century and massively expand Melbourne’s rail network? 
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Circle_railway_line - History of the Outer Circle Railway Melbourne 
University Archives http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/maps/map-historical.html Maps of Melbourne 1910 showing Rail network and 1945 Aerial photography of Metro Rail Netwok.

Saturday 1 February 2014

A quick book report

 It was a good gift giving season and these holidays with nothing better to do but relax I read some of my presents.This is what I thought of them.

Tournament by Matthew Riley.


It 's great to see Mr. Riley bounce back from the tragedy in his life that happened after his previous release. It looks like he may have found his mojo once again. For once there are no Mag guns, high tech weaponry or aircraft in sight. What we have is a period who-done-it staring Queen Elizabeth- the first one. Riley still manages to write prose that makes you speed read but this time he fills it with history, detective work and something new to his writing –sex. The book tells of Queen Elizabeth as a young teenager being sent to Turkey to attend a chess tournament by her father Henry the Eighth. She is accompanied by her tutor the every resourceful and ahead of his time: Roger Ashcam. What transpires is a very satisfactory mystery and some hints to why the “Virgin” Queen grew to be the monarch she became. This is an encouraging career path for Riley who uses historical conjecture for his own story telling. purpose. I hope he does more in this vein.


 Doctor Sleep by Stephen King 

Stephen King’s last two novels 11-22-63 and Under The Dome saw him, in my opinion bounce back to his best. With his latest Doctor Sleep he continues the streak. As a sequel to the Shining, we get to see the man Danny Torrance grew up to be and how the “shining” influenced his life. Which in his early years wasn’t that great. To make this even more interesting King (who channels the early Clive Barker) introduces The True Knot, a group of Grey Nomads who travel the sight seeing routes of America in their Campervans. This of course is their cover as they actually hunt down and feed on children with the "shining". Danny’s travels find him in a town where he discovers another child with shining powers that far exceed his own and when the True Knot zero in on the child he finds himself back at the site of the Overlook Hotel Hotel for a chilling showdown/ This is a great read and classic King returning to his earlier roots.


 The Girl With All The Gift by M.R Carey

 I can say with out fear that this book is probably the best book I’ll read this year. I found myself turning each page with anticipation for what was to come next and I was never disappointed. This is a Zombie story with a difference, whilst it could be accused of channelling The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later and even The Road it’s originality shines through. Set in a not too distant future, a group of children are held in a military base where they are treated with extreme caution. We discover they are a different breed of self aware and intelligent species of what most of the world has become thanks to a fungus that has the ability to turn humans into zombie like flesh eaters. The author uses scientific fact as the basis of the outbreak which makes this novel much the more scarier. Carey has made his main character Melanie, one of the children an anti hero right up to the last page where her good nature despite her infliction is realized. A masterpiece I predict will be on everyone’s best book list later this year. READ IT.