Irregular Writings
September 2013
Adelaide, Docklands, Bucharest
Hey I’m just passing through and yelling from my car window but I must point out Adelaide people have lost more than they’ve gained. I mean the new Adelaide Oval.
What was once a cool, post colonial portal into a gentler time – a slowed, down-tempo, green world of freshly cut grass and large, flown fans to keep your flannels and khaki dry, is now a mess of concrete and glass dumped there in an ugly pile by the river.
Dumped seemingly by a cashed-up tradie in a sulk who is missing out on a better job in DUBAI. Must be good inside. Pity it’s so horrible for the rest of the city. Hey! It’s out of proportion! The city is not getting any bigger! Not enough water for a start.
Who’s this for? The AFL? The SANFL was much better anyway. You threw away the Peckers for the Crows.
Seriously, there was that lovely stretch from the train station to the Festival Centre and the river and then North Adelaide. I know the horse is always bolting and it has gone, well and truly in this case, but have a care for the place will yaz?
Victoria Square is having an underpass tunnelled under it – what for? There is no traffic problem is there? You have one tram. Is this why you can’t turn right across the new tracks anywhere down King William Street?
All those beautiful Victorian-era buildings turned into gyms and tourist two dollar shops. Is someone thinking there? Actually, don’t you have a resident thinker? Some fellow who runs a rock festival in the UK?
Cranes everywhere. It’s great that there’s a new hospital going up – always need them. You don’t need inner city high rise. From the centre of Adelaide (where there are still some actual streets with houses) you can usually glimpse the hills, the edge of the city. Hold onto this! You don’t need towers to make somebody feel like they’re in a ‘real’ urban environment. Adelaide is a wide open settlement. People drift in from the interior, the top end and the coasts. Keep it dolomite! Pink and solid.
I heard the voices of whingeing developers in your one newspaper while I was there. A man who wrecked Glenelg wants to wreck it better. Look at that place. It used to have a lovely hotel at the end of Jetty Rd. The Jetty Hotel. It was replaced by a monstrosity that was built to Romanian standards of disproportionate scale.
Ridiculously huge. But there was that lovely, goofy amusement park on the PUBLIC land. It was sold off privately and is mostly inaccessible.
You can’t get this stuff back! It’s not really progress. It’s just people printing money and scamming the city, because they can.
Hey I’m not usually like this. They’re building a McDonald’s in a suburb next to mine in Melbourne, despite 80 percent of the council voting against it. A big protest going on. They’re doing well without my help. I hope the protesters win. If they don’t, well, my neighbour told me the carpark used to have horses grazing on it. They pulled the carts for the dairy deliveries. It would be cute if that was still happening, but I don’t hold my breath.
Still, it’s just a fast food joint. Across the road from a primary school, sure, but it’s just a common outlet in a suburb on the edge of the city. I mean there’s plenty of stuff in the world going on that I don’t approve of.
It’s just that Adelaide Oval was cute. It had a presence from the outside and certainly on the inside. Whatever dopes thought it was a great idea to make a scale model version of the MCG have really fucked up. Though they have gone a long way to get to a position where they make decisions like that. Is it too easy to
get to those positions in Adelaide? I guess football is a greedy business.
They built VFL Park in Waverley, outer Melbourne, but this was tossed away after a few decades with the new dream of DOCKLANDS and the new stadium which would have music and television as well as football. Developers thought they could grow a culture from nothing but their own ads. It’s empty. Docklands Stadium, which has had several corporate names, does at least have the occasional music event. Only they can’t have a PA system on the ground as the surface sits on the roof of the carpark. (The hard surface has resulted in many players retiring early, blaming the ground for joint problems.) Neither can a PA be flown from the ceiling as there is a retractable roof.
The occasional show is put on after reinforcing columns are put under the ground – in the carpark, so the big speakers can be supported. There is, however, only one entrance for trucks to enter the arena. Most clubs who play home games there grumble how they can’t make any money. People in Melbourne go there, but they will go to any sporting event. Also, there are no other grounds, just the MCG and Docklands.
So don’t believe all these slick hustlers when they make out like they know what they’re doing. They’re just sweating on a whole lot of wet cement they’ve got out back that they need to do something with real quick.
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