Leonard Colquhoun
This cow attained mythic status.
EVERY now and then, there appears in the media an item — an article, a piece of commentary, a letter-to-whomever — which encapsulates some feature of the political process, expresses some facet of the voter’s dilemma, typifies some aspect of the life of homo suburbiensis.
Here is one, from the online version of The Age of Tuesday 20 June 2006:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/footscray-catches-slow-train-to-safety/2006/06/19/1150701485045.html
Congratulations, Cameron Houston: your “ … slow train to safety” should be stopping-all-stations of every Politics 101 course.
First, you’ve given an early mention to Maribyrnong Mayor Janet Rice’s classic enunciation of the disadvantage of living in a safe seat: “we are a safe Labor seat and … are being ignored”.
Now, to be fair, Ms Mayor, not entirely “ignored”. For instance, the tanned cow in the Maribyrnong River, downstream from the railway bridge west of the South Kensington station [Melways map 42, G4], seems to have gone.
This cow attained mythic status.
Obviously, some time in the mid-1950s, the poor animal had got stuck in the mud on the river’s eastern bank, and its bovine soul had departed hence to greener pastures, where, no doubt, it met Gary Larsen and achieved immortality. Its body was tanned into physical permanence by the effluent from the tannery works upstream, and thousands of passengers — “commuters”, Ms Mayor, had not then arrived in the western suburbs — experienced through sight and smell the odour of immortality.
This was to change in the early 1980s, when Labor finally won government in Victoria and got to work improving, among other things, public transport.
Trams and trains got new “liveries”, spin for a re-paint job, and VR and MMTB became “The Met”^. Conductors (while they lasted — see below) got at least three lots of new uniforms, and commuters — “passengers” were oh, so, 1950s — got scratch tickets.
Never heard of them ?
Well, they worked like this.
You bought a ticket which was meant to work like a Lotto scratch-card, with little blobs of grey stuff covering the names of the months of the year and the numbers 1 to 31, and the idea was that you scratched off the relevant blobs at the start of your trip, sorry, commute, and — here’s the rub — you were meant to do this on a one-scratchy-per-commute basis.
Well, every Grade 3 kid in suburban Melbourne quickly worked that one out; some high schoolers used the same ticket for up to a year. Many adults were just as digitally agile, too. Not long after the Coalition under Jeff Kennett won the 1992 election, discovery was made of a supply of scratch-tickets sufficient for 200 years commuting — longer, if nobody was looking as you commuted. [Anyway, in an equally inspired piece of administrative stupidity, Kennett sacked the conductors and unmanned, sorry, de-staffed the railway stations, so “I’ve got a ticket to ride” times ten or twenty became even easier. Besides, vandals loved these new arrangements.]
But neither John Cain Jnr or Joan Kirner ever got round to doing up the century-old Footscray railway station, for the simple reason that safe ALP seats, whether in Sydney’s or Melbourne’s western suburbs or in Hobart’s northern areas, can “safely” be ignored once Labor wins government — well, they’re not going to suddenly vote Coalition, are they ?
Secondly, Cameron, you’ve been able to quote this equally classic piece of reality-free government spin: “a working group was being established to identify options for the station”. Possibly, also, Mr Batchelor mentioned some unquoted “issues” in relation to the Essential Commuting Options such as Commuting Safely, Commuting Thoughtfully, Commuting in a Non-threatening Manner, Multiculturally Aware Commuting, Commuting with an Indigenous Perspective, and Inclusive Non-racist and Non-genderist Commuting.
A “working group to identify options” is, of course, the diametric opposite of what legendary Hawthorn FC coach John Kennedy Snr famously demanded of his players: “Do something.”
In the lead up to Victoria’s November State election, Transport Minister Peter Batchelor will toss out some old bones, possibly re-cycled*, for the Footscray station’s 12,000 daily commuters, sorry, customers, to salivate over.
But, post-election, if results are as the pundits predict, there’ll be no one prepared to “do something”, except, perhaps, a name change for Footscray station along the lines of “Western Inter-modal Transit Hub”, along with some catchy new slogans like “SmartCommute with WITH”, or “SafeCommute with WITH”.
“Footscray” station neglected for 100 years ? — What “Footscray station” ?
Maybe, between now and November 2006, those 12000 commuters from Melbourne’s west need to try a different journey, and dare to vote Coalition, even if only to get a different sprinkling of manure as their trains go through each tunnel.
^ no, silly, NOT the New York Metropolitan Opera
* perhaps supplied by those in charge of the Harrington Street public housing fiasco
Leonard Colquhoun 7248
For http://www.oldtt.pixelkey.biz
20 June 2006
