Category: Rides

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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”

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Breakfast at the Collingwood Children’s Farm

Long have I waited before posting about the Collingwood Children’s Farm. Meanwhile, a Farm Flickr group has been created. The first post about Abbotsford’s most precious and wonderful asset was supposed to be fittingly splendid. Well, it’s going to be mundane, just eggs and coffee. For the missing Abbotsford breakfastry is upon us, and in a glorious way that the sniffy author of The Breakfast Blog would probably loathe. His readers seem to think that Collingwood is a “Northern suburb” and Abbotsford rates not a review, while Collingwood rates only two, for Gluttony and Cafe Rosamond which latter I must confess I am now curious about.

The missing breakfastry is the Collingwood Children’s Farm Cafe, open Tuesday to Saturday 9.30 to 4.30 during school holidays and “Wednesday to Sunday otherwise”. Continue reading “Breakfast at the Collingwood Children’s Farm”

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Hoodlum slashes cabbie; cabbie robs old lady; sniper guns down cyclist

A wave of curious crimes is sweeping over our area. On 19 March a thin Asian hoodlum who seemed to be about 17 years old slashed a cabbie with a knife after getting in on Victoria St, prompting calls for the installation of security screens. Down the road in Thomastown Kathleen Kelsen, an 84 year old woman, probably supports those calls after a cabbie stole $400 from her by convincing her that others had used her taxi card without her knowledge, but that she was responsible for the bill. And in Northcote, Melinda Zygarlicki was shot in the lungs by an unknown sniper whilst crossing a bridge over Merri Creek near Rushall Station on the Merri Bike Path. She thought she had been branded by a tennis ball, or that a bird had flown into her, and rode the rest of the way home. The Herald Sun seems to know something Melinda doesn’t since they are sure that the sniper was a “gunman“. For the photo, thanks to Puss in Boots, a Kuwaiti girl obsessed with Manga.