Archive for the 'Australia' Category

Why Woy Woy road is falling apart?

Published by vital on June 26, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
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Another exciting news for anyone hoping Woy Woy road will be finally fixed some time soon.

It looks like there is another “little crack” in the road. And it looks like the crack has been known since April this year but still nothing has been done. And it looks like the crack is just as little as 50 meters long and it continues to grow. And, surprisingly, it looks like the crack is caused by rainwater escaping damaged underground pipe, which happened to be situated right under that section of the road. I have a feeling that I already heard about some road been washed away by rainwater…

Anyway, according to todays “Express advocate“, the issue was addressed with “High priority”. Which apparently means nothing has been done. Yet?

Something is definitely wrong with roads on Central Coast. Have you heard that two weeks ago we were just centimeters away from another road collapse on Kariong Hill? That’s why they doing those urgent roadworks on Saturdays’ nights.

Let’s just hope this is simply a surface crack, which could easily be caused by numerous reasons but don’t usually lead to road closures; at least as far as I can judge from newspaper’s photo, it is about as serious as that. I want to go there during daytime to see it by myself. Not sure If I can scrap a moment this weekend, but may be it is the time to sell the car as driving around Coast will soon become impossible?

The future is very fucking expensive!

Published by vital on June 24, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
This entry is also available in: Русский

Chaser’s team did it once again!

Only the dead does not talk about soaring petrol prices these days. 1.70 per liter of unleaded mixed with ethanol (Folks! There is far more better application for C2H5OH!) is not a joke anymore. Last week TV showed how overcrowded public transport was struggling with rapidly increased number of commuters; and I especially remember an interview they took from a man who complained he could not afford to drive his V8 to work anymore. Sure, that’s the real issue.

And what is government doing? I’d say “nothing”, but that would not be true as they are really up to something. Something, that Chaser’s team explained in just a few words

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Rudd killed electric car?

Published by vital on June 10, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
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Great news, everybody! We will pay 35*10^6 bucks to Toyota so they can possibly start delivering Camry Hybrid by maybe 2010. They promising outstanding fuel economy - only 5.7 liters/100 km! Woohaa, we saved!

What a joke. You know, these days there are plenty of cars around that have about the same thirst, for instance, my Civic 2007 (not a hybrid, thanks God!) only takes 6.5-7.0/100 km (and I am not joking!), not mentioning dozens of diesel cars freely available on the today market that can run 100km on even less than 5 liters offering truckloads of torque at the same moment. I simply don’t see the point of building hybrids - they are at least as twice as complex as average modern petrol car, they still have that mistake called Internal Combustion Engine under the bonnet, what from engineer’s point of view is nothing else but a joke - several hundreds moving parts, dozens of sensors, neutralizers, computers built for the only purpose to convert less than 20% of energy concluded in fuel into the move (another 80% are simply heating the environment), in addition all this zoo of “state of art technologies” requires once-a-10K oil change, toxic coolant, timing belts, spark plugs and counting. Simply get rid of it, use the space and weight saved to put extra batteries and you get emission free vehicle that costs almost nothing to run, requires almost no maintenance and is easy and fun to drive. How about 300 N*M at zero rpm? That’s what electric vehicle (EV) is.

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Somersby tragedy - they found who to blame

Published by vital on June 2, 2008 in Australia and Life. 3 Comments
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It has been only a year since a part of the major road on Central Coast collapsed in a heavy rain, claiming five lives and only two months since only a miracle prevented even possible worse when part of Woy Woy road was washed away, and we finally know who is responsible for those deaths.

Of course, ladies and gentleman, not surprisingly it is the driver. He was pissed off (0.002 over the limit) and might have possibly smoked “some substance” some time before. Thanks God, we all know that driver simply was drunk and therefore did not notice the gap until very late.

What a bunch of crap, I think. Whole 0.002 over the limit! Did anyone notice any reference on how accurate that blood alcohol test is? But regardless, in the first turn they did not hit the power pole that crossed the road, they did not park in the tree - they drowned in a river of dirty water in the same spot where a road was supposed to be, and, which does not make it any easier for those who really responsible for road collapse, the drainage issue was known well before and the collapse was completely preventable. But nothing has been done. The driver might be drunk but isn’t his and four other people death a bit too severe punishment for not predicting what should and could be prevented?

Living in Australia, we are relatively lucky - we don’t get black ice on the road (awesome feeling of sudden and total loss of control, a fresh change of pants may be required, if you were lucky), we don’t have six months of snowfalls, limiting visibility to tens of meters, the roads are mostly built on rocks instead of swamps, there are still plenty of room for new road (opposed to crowded Europe). The only we need is to build a road and make sure that when rain finally falls, it will go into sewage alone, without taking the asphalt with it. It is as simple as it is and not a rocket science at all - I bet building the house on the slope may be much more challenging than constructing a road. But why the hell things like this still happen? What are they waiting for? For a school bus full of children, sorry, don’t even want to think about that.

They have got their whipping boy, but why should we even care about who to blame? There is nothing we can help them or their families, there is only one question that should be asked - what has been done to stop roads from being flushed away in a country suffering from worst ever drought? Woy Woy road makes me think that very little indeed…

I am very, very frustrated, ladies and gentlemen.

Traffic chaos on Central coast solved? May be.

Published by vital on May 1, 2008 in Australia and Life. 2 Comments
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Well, only 50 minutes from Gordon to Woy Woy today. As it was before.

They opened Woy Woy road in one direction and it apparently eased a pressure on evening commuters. But there are no evidences of any work in progress at Bulls hill, everything I could notice was a barricade and 25 km/h signs.

Another question is why did it open it in one direction only - while there is only one line available it still could be reversible, all they need is bring a pair of temporary radio controlled traffic lights and put them on the top and on the bottom of the hill - they do it all the time around roadwork sites anyway! In peak hour the whole thing could be one-directional, but there is no point of leaving it like this permanently - the traffic there has always been far from heavy and a couple of minutes wait in front of light would be much better than 25 minutes “drive” from Tascot to West Gosford.

Did they just never consider this option or there was another reason?

Closed road and cutting edge technologies

Published by vital on April 30, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
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How do you think could internet search engines be affected by a shower or two causing minor disruption on local roads? Well, they are. Take a look at this. This trend shows that recently (late April 2008) there was a spike in searches containing phrase “Woy Woy” and Google thinks it happened because of our road closure. Quite a smart thing, isn’t it?

The only thing it does not know is when it will be over.

Woy Woy road closed

Published by vital on April 29, 2008 in Australia and Life. 37 Comments
This entry is also available in: Русский

And will remain closed for a long time. See below.

It happened quitely and without broad media coverage. Of course, who cares about forgotten suburb one hour drive north from Sydney?

The thing is that our one hour drive turned into almost two as motorists forced to take a detour via Gosford. The distance seems almost the same on the map, but in fact traffic around West Gosfors is just hopeless - in evening rush hour a traffic jam starts at Kariong! And still no “breaking news” and even any pictures. Isn’t it because what happened is very similar to Pacific hwy collapse at Somersby last year?

Thanks to Internet, there are some info and pictures available

Woy Woy road subsude at Bulls hill, april 2008

But still no oficial information about when the road can be opened again…

Woolloomooloo. A couple of words about history.

Published by vital on February 22, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
This entry is also available in: Русский

Middle Ages, that left Europe with heaps of what today is mainly used as tourists attractions, did not happen to Australia. Well, the Black Death and other little happinesses of these times such as inquisition and accompanying obscurantism did not happen here too, which is some sort of luck. But Black Death is gone (forever, hopefully, despite humans keep inventing new methods of reducing its population) and Acropolis in Greece, Stonehenge in UK are left. In comparison, Down Under can offer something even more ancient - aboriginal engravings, some of which can even be found in Sydney and which age can sometimes be compared with fossil mammoth’s shit. May be, this is the reason why they did not attract crowds of tourists yet.

Things aren’t better with architectural masterpieces. Want to see baroque, renaissance, Gothic or whatever it is called - there is Versailles, Saint-Petersburg and German castles. But those who say there aren’t many historic places in Down Under are wrong - they are almost everywhere, one just need to have a look around. For example, take a look at this panoramic picture I took in one of sought after locations in Woolloomooloo

Woolloomooloo wharf

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Wombat in Potoroo Palace

Published by highlander-spb on January 16, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
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Before writing this post, I sent this picture to my friend in Russia and got just an awesome reply “What the hell is this?”

Wombat in Potoroo place, NSW

After a short introduction to animals’ world of Australia and a short (40-45 minutes) lecture on that topic I got a little bit more fitting description concluded in its comparison with a mole.

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Ben Boyd national park

Published by highlander-spb on January 15, 2008 in Australia and Life. 0 Comments
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Those who get to Australia first may notice certain lack of creativity in how Australians give names to streets, roads and other geographical objects. Similar names happen quite often, but, from the other side, this is not uncommon at all - I can remember Finland with their Kirkkokatu or Linnankatu in every small town, but Australia seems especially passionate about a few historical names. That is, Macquarie street is found in almost all Sydney’s suburbs, not mentioning famous Mrs Macquarie chair (remember spectacular Sydney’s NY fireworks photos?) and Macquarie Uni. And this is understandable - he happened to be the first Grosvenor of the colony and with no doubts should be threated with all possible respect. Names of other political persons as Banks, Hume, and, of course, Her Majesty are not less popular. Surprisingly, name of capt. La Perouse whose main achievement was arriving a few weeks after capt Cook is remembered more often than a Cook’s name itself. But I wanted to tell about other person from Australia’s history who’s now even got a whole national park named after him.

Ben Boyd tower

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