It’s Labour Day in Australia. Why now, not September like everyone else, is unclear. It marks the beginning of tourist season and yet another round of school holidays. Soon the streets will be clogged with ensemble casts of city-folk dragging inflatable devices, beer coolers, lawn chairs, wives and children across busy intersections. The youngest child is required to drop a shoe, thereby requiring the embarrassed father to go back into impatient traffic to retrieve it. The town I work in consists entirely of retirement developments, golf courses and tourist accommodation on some of the best beaches you’ll see.
It takes an army of tradesmen to keep up with building gated communities, medical clinics and boutique shopping strips…and come 4pm they want to get the fuck out of there and home. The town is actually twin towns on either side of the sea entrance to a saltwater lake with a bridge joining them, and each afternoon lines of tradesmen in 4x4s with racks of pipe, shop girls in neon Hyundai’s, cement trucks, old people off to the bowling club, cars towing caravans, mobile cranes and semi-trucks all try to merge onto a bridge designed in the 1950’s to join two fishing villages. At one end of the bridge is the largest holiday park in town, on One Mile Beach, with a pedestrian crossing between it and the café’s, shops and take-away’s of the shopping district across the street. The pedestrians do not use the crossing but, rather fan out along the median, dashing across lanes of traffic like human Froggers or in family chains, roped together by beach towels and bags of gritty sandwiches and sun-screen. Girls in bikinis and boys in boardies SMS each other from the sides and point camera phones at each other.
It is also the time of year when local council decides to do road work on both ends of the bridge simultaneously. I suppose they only remember once the problem returns because over the winter you see no sign of them. Lanes and traffic patterns change hourly and the way you came in to town is never the same way you leave.
It used to be worse, when the Australian Iron Man was held there as well. For weeks before, gangs of militant bikers in team colours with $100 water bottles, flipped up hats and wrap around yellow sunglasses ride 3 abreast through the congested streets, in traffic when it suits or on the sidewalk if it’s quicker. On Iron Man weekend all semblance of order was discarded with participants, support teams and spectators crossing the streets when and where they liked, fingering cars which dare honk a horn. “It’s ok, we’re Tri-athletes.”
But in a nice bit of irony the Australian Iron Man has pulled out and moved an hour up the coast to a very similar venue. The reason being the lack of accessibility due to traffic congestion and constant road works.
It takes an army of tradesmen to keep up with building gated communities, medical clinics and boutique shopping strips…and come 4pm they want to get the fuck out of there and home. The town is actually twin towns on either side of the sea entrance to a saltwater lake with a bridge joining them, and each afternoon lines of tradesmen in 4x4s with racks of pipe, shop girls in neon Hyundai’s, cement trucks, old people off to the bowling club, cars towing caravans, mobile cranes and semi-trucks all try to merge onto a bridge designed in the 1950’s to join two fishing villages. At one end of the bridge is the largest holiday park in town, on One Mile Beach, with a pedestrian crossing between it and the café’s, shops and take-away’s of the shopping district across the street. The pedestrians do not use the crossing but, rather fan out along the median, dashing across lanes of traffic like human Froggers or in family chains, roped together by beach towels and bags of gritty sandwiches and sun-screen. Girls in bikinis and boys in boardies SMS each other from the sides and point camera phones at each other.
It is also the time of year when local council decides to do road work on both ends of the bridge simultaneously. I suppose they only remember once the problem returns because over the winter you see no sign of them. Lanes and traffic patterns change hourly and the way you came in to town is never the same way you leave.
It used to be worse, when the Australian Iron Man was held there as well. For weeks before, gangs of militant bikers in team colours with $100 water bottles, flipped up hats and wrap around yellow sunglasses ride 3 abreast through the congested streets, in traffic when it suits or on the sidewalk if it’s quicker. On Iron Man weekend all semblance of order was discarded with participants, support teams and spectators crossing the streets when and where they liked, fingering cars which dare honk a horn. “It’s ok, we’re Tri-athletes.”
But in a nice bit of irony the Australian Iron Man has pulled out and moved an hour up the coast to a very similar venue. The reason being the lack of accessibility due to traffic congestion and constant road works.
5 comments:
there`s something about triath-letes. "holier than thou" All those REALLY keen people you see in gyms properly kitted and properly focussed, their secret is they are all training for triathlons, and on a few days a year it is their turn to be better than anyone else.
Triatheletes are fucking crazy. My coach is one. And he's crazy. Ergo, they're all fucking crazy.
they ought to put the swimming last
If they wont go for swimming last, how about replacing the running with standing on floating logs?
here in california we do the same thing.
every year it rains and our storm systems can't handle it and things flood. but every summer no one does shit to fix or maintain these things.
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