Wednesday, October 19, 2011

one flow to go




If you tip your cup of coffee over in the morning, does this mean you are going to have a bad day?
Not if the coffee gets into your handbag, on your jacket and shoes, all over the floor and chairs – in a cafĂ© – but doesn’t land on your favourite linen blouse.

3 gold stars to Starbucks at Spencer St oops Kings Southern Cross Station;
  1. Bringing a mop and cloths to the problem without any fuss;
  2. Providing a new cup of coffee free of charge when it was the last thing on my mind;
  3. Using Fair Trade Coffee.
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The Port of Hastings has finally got the go-ahead for container ship development. The only vexing question is how containers headed for the western suburbs will be moved across – rail or road?

Lindsay Fox has been asking for a second, sensible logistics centre for years, and the suggestion has been made there will be one established somewhere around Dandenong or Lyndhurst. None of this NIMBY [not in my backyard] attitude from me, just so long as I don’t have to do battle with 30m road trains around the inner city area.

This proposal could no doubt bring a lot more jobs to the peninsula [without disturbing its favoured western shores].
There are already regular visits from oil tankers because of the Esso and BlueScope Steel plants – forget my backyard, I do worry what we can do if/ when an oil spill finally threatens Phillip Island?


4 comments:

  1. That was nice of Starbucks.

    I'm glad you weren't burned.

    Well, hopefully you weren't.

    So did you end up having a bad day?

    Maybe it's a bad omen to spill coffee; but a good omen if people help you and bring you new coffee.

    I hope the oil spill doesn't happen. That can't easily be cleaned up with a paper towel.

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  2. Hi Dina, I wasn't burned because the coffee had just got to the right temperature for drinking before I knocked it. I did have a good day, thank you. There's a young woman at work who studies at the Frankston TAFE twice a week, and not only did she put me onto the right platform for an early express train, I had someone to chat to along the way.
    Until I mentioned the new port expansions I hadn't given much thought to how close Phillip Island is to all this activity. My initial reaction was 'oh goody, more work in this area'. When I took a good look at Westernport Bay on Google Maps it suddenly hit me just how sheltered the bay is and how impossible it would be to clean up the area. It's one of the very few places anywhere that people can see the fairy penguins coming ashore to feed their young, and if any spill happened it would be an enormous tragedy- not just for the birds but for the people of the world.

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  3. Rail is the only sensible freight transport option from Westernport. If the freight has to go to the western suburbs, then provision could be made for the train to use the proposed Footscray to Caulfield underground train. Wouldn't the tidal action in the bay work like anywhere else, that is push oil in onto the shore but also pull a lot out into Bass Strait. Regardless, Phillip Island will cop it very badly. But being a sheltered harbour much reduces the likelihood of a spill.

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  4. Hi Andrew, if anyone could put the pieces together for me it would be you. I didn't know about the Footscray to Caulfield proposal - just that some people in Footscray were going to be bought out and then they weren't. Well, that proposal sounds like a plan.
    Can't comment about tides but your point about the harbour being sheltered and so reducing risk is a good one, and quite reassuring.

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