Walkin’ in the Valley of Death: Victoria St

Pays to be careful as a pedestrian in Abbotsford. This poor bugger was knocked down dead by a van back in May and died, and at 2.25 a.m. yesterday, some bloke standing near the corner of Nicholson and Victoria Sts gets dead after being hit by a white van. It’s an event a minute on Victoria St: someone was pulled over at 2.30 a.m. on 6 June 2006 with a vial of GBH. Of course he was not a local, but a burgher of that disreputable part of town on the other side of the river, Kew. There they found the big stash. And now it seems a Hoddle St servo got visited by those kids on the security video on tonight’s news, as recently as 23 June 2006. And these guys are like serial armed robbers man. You can rely on hearing it second on this blog.

Riding on a car-free Yarra Boulevard

With thousands of lycra clad fittos (and some notsofittos), I twirled through a few laps of Yarra Boulevard on 12 March when Bicycle Victoria blocked it off to cars (the next “cyclovia” is on 28 May 2006: 4 km of Sydney Road in Brunswick for 6 hours). It is one of the world’s few events where the coffee is free but water costs. It was all good. There were free muffins, and an Oxfam stall where these wonderful bags made fruit juice packs were for sale. I wonder if everyone else was as ignorant as me about Yarra Boulevard. Did you know that by going to the river end of Gipps St, following the bridge across the Yarra, and continuing up the path straight ahead, you reach Yarra Boulevard, and can then ride along an undulating and winding riverside bushland boulevard which starts nowhere in particular, ends nowhere, and is seemingly only used by late model Mercedes? Continue reading “Riding on a car-free Yarra Boulevard”