I woke at 6.30 to the sound of dripping water. It was landing on the closed toilet seat lid in he main toilet. I opened the lid for the water to fall into. The floor was flooded, including Jass' litter tray. In my brunch coat without a skerrick of lippy, I knocked on the door of the apartment above, but without a response. I went down to ground level and called them on the intercom. After the third call, someone responded and let me in up to his floor, who walked from his bedroom across squelching wet carpet to answer. Then another lad appeared, and then a third, the last being bare topped but that did not distract me. I forget the exchange but he asked if I could help. In the service room in the stairwell, I showed him how to shut off the water. 

I knew exactly the problem. A flexible hose had burst and given it was hot water, it was under the basin of bathroom. A few decades ago, as a cost saving measure, a man, and I know it must have been a man, decided flexible pipes connecting to fixed copper pipes was a good idea, and they have been very widely used. But they have a shelf life of a very cautious five years to ten years or even fifteen years. I expect the hoses were original, so they have done well, lasting for 27 years.

I had hoped the water was just localised and once it stopped dripping into the toilet, all would be well Then I noticed some water running down the wall of my ensuite, then some drips on the cornice in the kitchen. Oh dear, the kitchen floor was wet.

I attempted to call the building manager several times but I didn't think he started until 9.30. He eventually called back, explaining and apologising that he was late as he wasn't well. 

Then things began happening, and the next two hours were a whirl of people, phone calls, text messages, emails, and a building flood specialist visited, needing authorisation to to begin work for me. Being Saturday, many people weren't working but did help out this damsel in distress in an emergency situation.

At some point Phyllis arose and remarked that he had heard dripping when he was half awake but saw his window was wet and assumed it was rain. He stepped out of bed later onto wet carpet. There is wet carpet in the spare room too.

I can't remember what I was going to do on Saturday, but whatever, it didn't happen. By 2 o'clock there were two industrial sized dehumidifiers blasting away, along with four industrial sized air circulating fans, with three more to be added this morning. These will be blasting away for seven days. Imagine the noisiest range hood fan multiplied by seven running non stop in your home for seven days. We can turn them off at night, but they are fine running in the living area, just not in the bedrooms at night. 

As I understand, correctly the Owners' Corporation, informally the Body Corp's insurance will pay for the drying out and repainting where necessary. I am assured as a side benefit is the carpets will dry out too, but if not, it is classed as home contents, not a building issue, so it is down to my home contents insurance, which I nearly didn't pay last year as we've never made a claim, but I am glad I did pay it (I had to check to make sure I had), being a back up for the carpet. 

So to put it concisely, life is shit and will be for the next week, and perhaps longer. Sunday I took a long train ride to Upper Combuctor West, just to get away from home and the noise. I did stop off for a bite to eat and coffee at Footscray, and for the first time as I sipped my coffee, I felt uncomfortable there, with many people around with mental health issues and some distant shouty person.  

Yesterday would have been Ray's 77th birthday. We always faced crises together. Now it is all down to me. Mind, Phyllis and Kosov have been understanding, and cleaned up a heap of wet cat litter that Jass had flung about, but they are barely more than kids.

Rationalise Andrew. I am not a victim of Cyclone Narelle. I am not getting bombed. There isn't a threat to my existence, so there, I feel better now. No, I don't. 

Artificial Intelligence Slop. This is a term I've heard used and I've seen examples of AI Slop. This photo below is a prime example of AI Slop, as this photo pretended to a Melbourne Station in St Kilda but the building was actually London's Old Bailey Court.

In the 1950s there was a serious train crash at the Washington DC Union Station. The short YouTube video about the crash was interesting enough and sounded very factual, but what can be trusted in the video? I took a screenshot towards the end of the clip and something didn't seem quite right in what I was watching. Can you see it? Actually, I've seen a another AI Slop in the still. 

If you visit Sydney, it is almost compulsory to catch a ferry from Circular Quay to Manly, with one side of the suburb facing the harbour where the ferry berths, and the other side, the open Pacific Ocean, great for surfing.

Once when returning from Manly to Sydney's Circular Quay, we were tossed about a bit and a little water sprayed those sitting outside at the bow. Seeing people outside being sprayed was very amusing. However, it was nothing like what is in these videos. The only dicey part of the trip is when the ferry crosses Sydney Heads, open water to the Pacific Ocean, and was no doubt where this occurred. I hasten to add, this is very unusual.

I believe these videos were taken by Matt Lambley, maybe. I've seen a different name embedded in the video. 

As I type, the full extent of the destruction caused by bushfires in my state is not known. Many houses have been destroyed, including that of my neighbour HH's daughter. It is her second home, mostly used by her husband when teaching in the area, and not their principal residence now. 

Ironically, for her work during the 2009 fires that affected the same area, along with with her volunteer lifesaver work, the daughter was awarded an OAM (Order of Australia) , well deserved in her case, going far beyond her hospital job description; just napping in her office for two weeks straight without stopping her help to victims of the 2009 fires. Now her house in the same area has been burnt to cinders. 

The full extent of the destruction will become apparent in the days to come, but we already know many animals, pets, livestock and native animals were killed. There hasn't been any confirmation of lives lost, yet.

A man visited this morning to quote for new lounge room venetian blinds. I went across the road after he left for coffee and it was quite cool. Maybe 20/68 degrees. I then caught a 58 tram for two stops to the local Woolworths Metro supermarket. I bought a sandwich and a pastry. I forgot about the pastry, and it is still on the kitchen bench. By the time I reached home, the temperature had risen by over 10 degrees. 

The new aircon unit coped very well, and next to the external part of it, the hot air blasting out felt like it was burning my skin as the temperature reached 43/110. Inside, thermometers said 23/73.

Another blind man visited in the afternoon to give his quote. As he was here, the quote from the morning man arrived to my desktop email and he noticed it was from another company. What fun!

The hard sell from the second bloke began. Pay a 50% deposit today, and that will be $100 less. I did not as I await another quote. The two quotes I received are the same in dollars, but I know I can beat them down. 

Jass found it too hot outside on the balcony, but at carpet level, I think she found it cold.

When the new lounge chairs arrive in March, Jass will lose her refuge under the chairs and no longer will be able to show her pink bits.

Marysville began its life as a gold mining settlement and progressed on to be logging town but by the 1950s it had become a town to visit for a holiday, especially in autumn when the exotic trees turned into their red and golden colours.

This is exactly what my maternal grandparents did, alternating each year between Marysville, the similar town of Bright and seaside Rosebud. They would stay in guesthouses, which as far as I can remember had private rooms with a shared bathroom, and a communal kitchen along with an area to eat your meals and a lounge to sit and read or whatever.

I remember visiting Marysville with Ray and a couple of friends in the 80s, where we had high tea in the best known guest house in the town. I can't remember its name. It might come to me (Mary Lyn), which is where my grandparents stayed). In the 1990s we visited with my mother and stepfather.One year in the two thousand teen years, Ray and I visited the town, after the 2009 tragedy. I've just visited again and I cannot connect any of the visits together, and here is the main reason why.

During this visit, I looked around the town for houses with brick chimneys, of which there should be many in such a town. I did not see one. 

At the end of southern Australia's millennium drought on Friday the 6th of February 2009, our state premier appeared on tv to warn us that the next day would see terrible bushfires, with temperatures of 43/110 and people needed to evacuate to safe places at any sign of fire threat. He was derided for being melodramatic. The next day already burning fires fed by a hot, dry and strong north wind, with tinder dry forests turned into firestorms, the like that had not been seen for years, then with a southerly wind change, the fires became unpredictable.

There were 400 fires burning, 173 people died in Victoria, 45 of them in Marysville. Of four hundred buildings in the town, 14 survived. The town had quite simply been destroyed. Fire fighters switched from fighting fires to self preservation. So, there aren't brick chimneys in Marysville now.  

Sister, Bone Doctor and the two year old Little Jo were living in Bendigo, with Bone Doctor working at Bendigo Base Hospital, and on that day Sister and Little Jo were under threat from the fires and evacuated to the centre of town. I should look back at my old blog at what I wrote at the time.

The Marysville of the 80s that we visited was very different to the Marysville we visited in the two thousand teens, still quite bare after the fires, to a now gorgeous town full of new shops, places to eat, buildings and houses. By the number of cafes and restaurants and huge amounts of seating, it must be incredibly busy at times. 

  

It was a long time ago when I posted about the local Sunshine train crash back in 1908. I was reminded of it when I recently came across this memorial plaque at Sunshine Station.

You can read about the detail on Wikipedia, and here is a snip. 

The Sunshine rail disaster occurred on 20 April 1908 at the junction at Sunshine railway station (in Sunshine, Victoria, Australia) when a Melbourne-bound train from Bendigo collided with the rear of a train from Ballarat. 44 people were killed and over 400 injured, almost all of them from the Ballarat train, as the Bendigo train was cushioned by its two locomotives.^[2]

It is the second worst train disaster in Australia after the much later 1977 Granville train crash with 83 killed. Nowadays, train crashes are so rare here, and deaths even rarer. 

I worked on this for a long time, simply to find the audio, upload it and somehow place it here. Hence no post yesterday. I think it will work but truly, you are better to go to the website and just click play, and the lyrics are there too. 

Unfettered capitalism around the world has been an absolute environmental disaster over many decades. A list of the worst could be quickly written but I see no need. Others will have done it. I thought I was pretty well unshockable at what the excesses of capitalism could do, and I knew it was bad in South America,  but after watching this 15 minute doco, I am truly shocked. 

I am not shocked by the environmental disaster. I knew about that. What I am shocked by is how the world and its legal system has failed in redress, in clean up and financial compensation. For goodness sakes, the pollution is still sitting there in South America. The world should be ashamed.

We are feeling very trapped at the moment. A car journey to the west, where we shop and visit for brunch a couple of times a week is now a convoluted route full of jammed up traffic and takes quite a long time to get anywhere at all. This is because our street St Kilda Road is closed for about three hundred metres north of us towards the city. The street is closed for tram track realignment past the new underground Anzac Station.

This a wonderful infrastructure project, but how we have suffered for a week and half with the same still to go. Trams are being replaced by buses for perhaps three kilometres. We have to walk about 7 minutes to the bus stop.

The bus takes a convoluted route and as like the traffic can't, the bus also can't travel along St Kilda Road either. It just takes forever to get to the city. I've used the replacement bus in all directions and after last Sunday, R has refused to do so again and I will do my best to avoid it too. Bad luck City traders and businesses. You know who to blame for such poor management.

Here is an example from last Sunday morning. 

11.05, depart home to catch public transport to the city to meet family. Walk south in the opposite direction for about 7 minutes to the bus replacement stop. There is no reason why it can't be kerbside and opposite the temporary outbound bus stop. It was a very warm 29 degrees and we don't walk terribly fast now.

A bus arrives at the stop as we did but the driver closed the doors and departed. We could see the bus was packed. About five minutes later another bus turns up. It was so full it couldn't take any more passengers and did not stop. Another five or more minutes the third one stopped and the about ten of us waiting squeezed on. It was then around 11.25.There had been other people waiting, including a family of Irish tourists. They gave up and I felt sorry for them. Others had left too.

Trying to turn into Kingsway was brutal in jammed up traffic. The third set of lights in a long cycle had us past Queens Road and it wasn't so bad then. More to feel sorry for as the bus had to leave behind about a dozen people in Wells Street and maybe half a dozen in Dorcas Street. I couldn't see that there was much chance of them being able to catch a bus there for a considerable time.

By tram from our front door to Bourke Street might have taken 15 minutes by tram. We changed from the bus to a tram at the Arts Centre and arrived at Bourke Street at 11.47, that is 42 minutes travel time door to city tram stop.

We are old men. We should not be standing on swaying, lurching and braking buses. No one offered their seats to us, unlike on trams, and I don't really blame them. We've experienced a few of these bus replacements situations in the twenty years we have lived here and I have never experienced one so badly organised and managed. How could Yarra Trams possibly think that a two minute service with medium sized trams can be replaced by a five minute slow loading bus service. What world do the planners possibly live in? It is a disgrace, and of course it is on the ground staff staff who unfairly cop the flak. Overheard, you are a tram worker who voted for him. Here is Dan's work in action.

We had a cunning plan to get home, train to South Yarra, tram to one stop short of home and then walk. The non disability compliant ramp at South Yarra Station, plus now a tram in 34 degree heat and the one stop walk home nearly killed us.