Posts filed under 'Canberra Stories'
The Canberra Balloon Fiesta has been moved from the week leading up to Canberra Day, to the April school holidays this year, but a shorter “Circus Of The Air” has been on in the lead up to Canberra Day. It is basically the same as the balloon fiesta, just with a circus at ground level added to it.
Anyway, on Sunday morning I got up early at about 4:30, having not slept, and rang John Kerr. I eventually had a chat with John at 5:15am about various things including whether or not the audio you hear when you’re on hold with a radio station is on delay or not, my first pay packet (which was one of the subjects of the show), and the fact that I was going to take Nattie to see the balloons.
At 5:35 Nattie and I left home and started walking to the lawns of Old Parliament House where the balloons take off from. We were just going around London Circuit and about to go up the bridge to Commonwealth Avenue when John Kerr signed off with “Good Morning Good Morning”, one of the songs from “Singing In The Rain”. I was singing along quite loudly during this 30 seconds or so which were played before the news. Nattie and I continued along Commonwealth Avenue and across the Commonwealth Avenue bridge, then we turned left and walked along the side of Lake Burley Griffin until we reached the lawn which goes right up to old Parliament House (with a couple roads crossing it). We then walked up there to the balloons.
Once we got there it was time for a bit of breakfast. Nattie and I got the “small” breakfast, of bacon, egg and toast, I also got a coffee. Nattie ate most of the bacon and half of the egg, I ate the rest. We then went back to the food tent and Nattie had half a sausage.
We then went and watched some hot air balloons being inflated and then later taking off. We turned the radio back on (David Young’s Garden was on) and walked over to Commonwealth Avenue where we got a good view of the balloons, which were drifting over Yarralumla and Lake Burley Griffin.
Afterwards we walked home. It was about 8am when we got home, and I had a cup of coffee before having Hot Cross Buns for breakfast.
Nattie and I might make the journey again for the actual Balloon Fiesta in April, and if we do, we’ll take the Camera with us.
Samuel
March 21st, 2006 at 09:49am
You may recall this post from nearly a month ago where I informed you of the unsafe manner in which Campbell High School‘s PE Classes were travelling to (and presumably from) the Civic Pool, with minimal, if any, teacher supervision and direction. As promised I sent a letter to the principal of Campbell High School, but I never received a reply.
None the less, the letter was received by the principal of Campbell High and once can only assume that meetings/directives ensued, as I was most pleased to see a Campbell High School PE Group heading back to Campbell High School from the pool in an orderly manner with clear teacher supervision and direction. This was this morning at about 11 o’clock as I was crossing the bridge over Coranderrk Street. I was very impressed to see the school group also utilising the bridge, and I gave the leading teacher an approving smile and “hello” as she passed. I also gave the teacher at the back of the group a smile, but he was focussing on the group and did not see me, which is fine as he was carrying out his job and fulfilling his duty of care.
Whenever possible I like to follow up my editorials where I raise concerns about issues to see if anything has changed, and if so I like to bring you the news, which is hopefully positive. I can assure you that I will be sending the principal of Campbell High School a very complimentary letter, thanking her for taking my concerns into account, and seeing that they were rectified. I am very pleased at this outcome, and am glad to see the public school system taking public concerns into account.
Well done Campbell High School!
Samuel
March 17th, 2006 at 04:05pm
On top of the old carpark between the City Markets and the old Griffin Centre is a new extension to the Canberra Centre which is currently under construction.
From the top of the City Markets carpark the construction looks like this.
Now from ground level, a sign advertising the expansion.
The construction is filled with “peep holes” around the side which enables people to see what is happening inside without being inside, this first photo isn’t very clear though.
Looking down Bunda Street you can just see some peep holes and a lot parked vehicles and cranes.
And some from the peep holes. Note that it was a lot darker than the photos indicates, but the camera compensated for that. I did not use a flash.
Then I took a photo of two cranes, one from Bovis Lend Lease and the other from The Men From Marrs.
Another photo from a peep hole.
More of the Section 84 construction from Bunda Street.
Some signs on a staff entrance.
And more of the outside of the construction from Bunda Street.
And another one of inside the constructions.
The Men From Marrs crane from near the base of the crane.
And then a photo of the construction work from Ballumbir Street.
Samuel
March 17th, 2006 at 03:30pm
As regular readers of this blog would be well aware from the recent coverage here, here, here & here, there is some underground cabling going on at Civic, to bring power to a new building which is currently under construction in Civic.
The cabling which runs from the Mount Ainslie substation down to the building in Civic, has been going on for quite some time, and they are finally up to pushing the cables through the conduit.
This map may be of some use in following this article
I took these photos on Monday, and started from the CIT Campus on the corner of Coranderrk Street and Constitution Avenue, by walking up Coranderrk Street where a set of seemingly unrelated cabling is taking place.
Just before the intersection between Coranderrk and Doonkuna Streets is one of these points of cabling.
There is some more near the corner of Coranderrk Street and Elimatta Street
And again near the corner of Coranderrk Street and Limestone Avenue (in the background is Campbell High School, the red and white building).
This set of cabling does not obviously appear to connect to any other cabling, so where it goes to from here is a mystery. Although I may have stumbled upon the answer later on in the tour.
From here I made the journey to the Mount Ainslie Substation. Taking photos of major bits of infrastructure in a mildly concealed location does fall into the category of “suspicious activity” and with UEA (the cabling company) staff around, I decided that I should limit the number of photos that I took. The ones that I did take don’t show much, and I would have like to take some more from a better angle, but these will do. Here is one.
There is a lot of conduit floating about on Mount Ainslie at the moment.
From the point I was standing on for the last two photos, you can see two points of cabling holes in the ground, the trench path in the distance, the back of the substation sign on the left, and a UEA truck on the right.
And another picture of the substation
Around this time an american tourist who was passing by asked me if I was a photographer and what I was photographing.
There is a sign for the substation (which ActewAGL call the “City East Zone Substation” and a sign informing us that the path we are using is a horse track).
There is also the back of a sign owned (and marked as such) by Cord Excavations. They have put their phone number (6260 2166) on it, presumably so that if it is lost, and you find it, you can ring them and they can pick it up.
And of course I was on the edge of the Mount Ainslie Nature Reserve, which also has a sign.
Here is one of the many cabling holes, featuring one cable and three streams of conduit, which is fairly normal for the current progress of the cabling.
And more conduit.
And much more conduit with a UEA truck.
It would appear that a trench was dug from the substation to the first road along the path, and from that point on Horizontal Directional Drilling was used. The trench (which has now been dug over) can be clearly seen here.
Further down we have another cabling hole.
And some of the nature reserve.
From here you can see the under-construction building, the eventual destination of the cables.
Shortly after this two ActewAGL vans passed by and I took a photo of one.
They then stopped up at the previously photographed hole and started working around there.
Then we have another hole, the first one along the Horizontal Directional Drilling.
And another one
Then there is one down at the corner of Batman Street and Limestone Avenue
Two UEA trucks turned up around this time and the occupants gave me strange looks, so I didn’t take further photos of that particular hole and went on to the next one, which looks like this.
It would appear that UEA are using Skippy Bins to store their dirt.
Then we have the hole which turns from being parallel with Limestone Avenue, to go under Limestone Avenue and become parallel with Allambee Street.
In that last photo you can see a fourth conduit, which appears to head in the general direction of Coranderrk, which makes it looks like they are giving that line of cabling a new feed, instead of using whatever feed they were using previously, which was quite possibly the same feed which services Campbell High School. Presumably they will split one of the cables into two so that it can feed Coranderrk Street.
On Allambee Street the holes on a block where things are a bit more likely to get thrown in by residents have been dug over.
By this time it is possible that I had attracted attention for taking photos of all this cabling, and a government car pulled up and the occupant appeared to monitor me for a while before going away.
On the next block, the first hole is marked “Demolition In Progress”.
Another hole has been dug over on this particualr block, although it is unclear why.
On the next block we have another hole.
From here we can see the under-construction building.
Crossing the road to the next block I could see some people working on a roof on a building in Argyle Square.
And it is possible to see the under-construction building and a crane from halfway down this block.
Where Allambee Street turns into Currong Street there is a large hole.
Half way down Currong Street it turns right on to Boolee Street, but the corner was covered in dirt.
On Boolee Street there is a sign informing of a road closure during some of the work which misspells Boolee.
And more signs related to the road closure.
From here you can see the under-construction building.
And there is a Horizontal Directional Drilling machine on the corner of Boolee Street and Kograh Lane.
And the hole just in front of it, where you can see some conduit and the drill piece on the Horizontal Directional Drilling machine
The cabling then goes under Ballumbir Street and through Glebe Park, on the corner of Boolee Street and Ballumbir Street there is are some street signs.
I then entered Glebe Park through the Galliard Smith Gate
From just inside the park you can see lots of Conduit and their hole in the ground.
Glebe Park is very wet underground, and has always been that way, as such this hole is pretty wet.
From here the under-construction building is highly visible.
UEA were moving one of their Horizontal Directional Drilling machine, if you look closely you will see mats under the machine, which appears to be needed for moving the machine on the bricks. The people moving the machine have to move the mats in front of the machine after they get behind it. In the background you can see the new building.
Around this time one of the UEA trucks that passed me on Limestone Avenue entered Glebe Park and the people inside started giggling when they saw me still taking photos. From just outside of Glebe Park I could see more UEA vehicles.
I then took a photo from the next block, on top of where the cable is going, with the path directly in front of, and directly behind me. You can see the under-construction building’s transformer room from here.
I then zoomed in the transformer room.
And one of the “High Voltage” signs.
I then took some photos of the under-construction building.
I then walked over to the CIT Campus for a cup of coffee at Cafe Yala (with discounts for students) and took these photos of the building from the bridge to the CIT Campus over Coranderrk Street.
After this I went and photographed the other main construction site over at section 84 (The Canberra Centre extension), which I will have the photos of, online shortly.
Samuel
March 17th, 2006 at 08:00am
A storm swept through Canberra this evening, it brought a spectacular lightning show, plenty of rain, a wee bit of hail. The Bureau Of Meteorology’s weather radar caught the action quite well.
I also caught this photo on the corner of Doonkuna and Allambee Streets just after the storm.
Samuel
March 15th, 2006 at 07:40pm
It amazes me how utterly stupid the designers of most large buildings in the Belconnen area really are. You would think that if you were designing buildings that the general public will need to be able to navigate quickly and easily, you would have a logical layout for the building…but not in Belconnen.
No, in Belconnen it is common to have buildings which are more like a maze than a building. One level may be multiple levels joined by starnge bridges and spiral staircases, with odd branches off to other different but connected buildings, which may share the same floor but use different floor numbers. Entrances are another strangeness of the area, you have to walk half way around a building to find a small unmarked and by no means obvious door which might just be an entrance, and hope that it doesn’t have a small “staff only” marking on it.
And don’t get me started on the interior grounds which often need to be navigated in order to find an entrance. These undulating maze like areas with paths that don’t really have any general direction and have many offshoots going in directions without any signs telling where they lead to, are often worse than the buildings themselves.
It could just be that I am used to the majority of buildings in the inner north where one level is one level, not many different levels on different buildings that might actually be the same building but are just split into many “organisational” buildings for no apparent reason. In the inner north, a corridor has logical room numbering, the staircases are predictable, and the signs point in the right direction. Perhaps I am just lucky to spend most of my time in logical buildings.
I do hope that the Belconnen experience hasn’t been repeated in too many other locations, as it is utterly ridiculous, and in a perfect world would be a criminal offence which would see the designers stripped of their legal ability to design buildings.
I just hope I don’t have to visit one of the buildings again in the near future.
Samuel
March 15th, 2006 at 04:52pm
It looks like ACTION are having an open day this Saturday, with guided tours of Belconnen and Tuggeranong depots. Naturally this has the bus enthusiasts excited, although not as much as previous unguided tours.
I won’t be there, mainly because I am preoccupied on Saturdays with newsreading, and also because I just can’t see much point in the whole thing. ACTION’s website makes it sound like some kind of secretive tour where they have a bus covered in a massive white sheet, take the sheet off, show you the bus and send you on your way. Maybe I’m exagerating, but the ACTION website says nothing, it basically tells you that you get to have a look around the depot and see what happens 365 days per year (in other words, the depot is still functioning and you will pass people doing their job, which they apparently don’t do on leap year day, the 366th day of the year).
So why do ACTION bother? They obviously don’t care about this “event” much as they couldn’t even be bothered to give the page a title, instead just doing a quick copy and paste of another page and change a bit of content, and leaving the title as “ACTION Buses – ACT Celebrateinthepark”.
My theory is that this is just an opportunity to see a roundup of the local bus enthusiasts, that is the people who are likely to take lots of photos of buses and put them up on websites and comment on minor changes to buses, such as the changing of the ads. This also allows ACTION to seperate the “bus spotters”, the people mentioned above, from the bus users like myself who take an interest in what happens behind the scenes without being obsessed with buses.
I have no problem with the event, and I wish ACTION all the best of luck with it, I just think it would be nice to have a proper open day with proper publicity, something which might drum up a bit of interest in the general public and potentially increase bus patronage. The way ACTION are conducting this, they will be unlikely to get anyone outside of the local bus enthusiast community attending.
Samuel
March 6th, 2006 at 09:29am
People walking around busy areas asking people for a certain amount of money, supposedly for a bus fare, whilst not looking in the least bit hard pressed for cash are not new nor rare, but they are a problem. In most cases I completely ignore these people, however one such “non-hard-pressed bus fare scammer” caught my attention today.
About 11:30 this morning I was walking to the bus stop opposite the Legislative Assembly building to catch a bus to Tuggeranong, and on the way passed one of “the regulars”, the people who seem to spend half their life wandering around asking for a bus fare and never catch a bus, this particular regular was probably the most regular, being blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. As per usual he was asking for 40 cents for a bus fair (seemingly oblivious to the fact that a concession bus fare is $1.30 minimum in Canberra, as would be most Civic office workers who probably don’t catch a bus to or from work anyway) and bothering many many people. I avoided him and continued on my way, not paying any further attention to him or his activities.
I went to Tuggeranong, had lunch with my bus driver friend, came back into Civic and had a coffee at the previously reviewed Coffee @ Helen’s. While I was in there enjoying a flat white, the previously sighted regular bus fare scammer walked in and asked the staff if they could change some coins into a $10 note, they agreed and he spent the better half of the next minute unloading his scammed booty of 20c, 10c and 5c coins, which was then counted by the staff and exchanged for a $10 note. The bus fare scammer then walked back home, which as I know is up at the top end of Ainslie Avenue in a set of apartment blocks I seem to have forgotten the name of.
I don’t know if there is anything legally wrong with this situation, but there is certainly something morally and ethically wrong with it. I spent some of the afternoon pondering the question of whether I should have intervened and pointed out that he had scammed at least 25 people to gain the amazing quantity of silver coins. Maybe I should have, but I tend to see, or at least pass this person once or twice a week, and would be in fear of my own safety if I had taken that course of action. Of course, it would have been nice to, at that moment, have been a Today Tonight reporter who had been following the scammers activities all day, and then pounced when he tried to convert his illgotten mini-fotune into a plastic note. There would have been an element of satisfaction in catching him red-handed, alas it was not to be, and I am left pindering the legal, moral and ethical ramifications of the situation.
I suppose I should summarise this by advising you not to give 40c “bus money” to someone in Civic who is blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. That’s probably the best advice I can give you.
Samuel
February 28th, 2006 at 11:15pm
You may recall my recent series of articles and photos of the underground cabling work being undertaken in my area by UEA (here, here & here).
On a recent walk with Nattie I uncovered the path of this underground cabling, and confirmed my theory that it may be electrical cabling, which I theorised when I saw ActewAGL looking at various sections of the route.
Anyway, the underground cabling is a new electricity feed to a new transformer in a new building in Civic. The cable runs from the Mount Ainslie substation (location is no secret, it’s marked on the UBD printed maps), along a bit of the nature reserve, down the side of and under a couple streets in Ainslie, along the Mount Ainslie side of Limestone Avenue, under Limestone Avenue, down one side of Allambee Street and the under the road at the corner end, along the side of Currong Street, under Currong Street, Along Boolee Street, under Kograh Lane, continuing along Boolee Street, under Ballumbir Street, under Glebe Park, under Bunda Street and finally at its destination.
A map of this follows.
So why am I telling you this? Quite simply because the whole process has interested me, and I am happy to finally know what it is all for. The work is by no means finished, and the intersection of Boolee Street and Kograh Lane remains closed for a few more days until the finish whatever they are doing there, one can only assume that this is a major part of the job, perhaps the location where the cable is being monitored from. None the less, with the building nearing completion, the electricity supply will be more than welcome, and I must say that the work appears to have been highly professional and well organised.
You could say that it is bring “power to the (office) people”…or maybe not.
Samuel
February 28th, 2006 at 03:59pm
It was only a few years ago that I was a student at Campbell High School, and I clearly remember the annual tradition of excursions to the Civic Pool during P.E. classes.
These were organised in an unusual manner, which involved walking to the pool and back from the high school. There was a small level of order to this odd excursion, there were three teachers, one leading the pack, one in the middle and one at the rear attempting to speed up the dawdlers. All students had to cross at the traffic lights on Limestone Avenue outside the high school, walk down a particular side of Coranderrk St to the Constitution Avenue traffic lights, cross at the lights, walk to the pedestrian crossing next to the convention centre and cross over to the swimming pool. This was quite naturally reversed on the way back.
Today on my way into the CIT Reid Campus around 11:30am I spotted one of these drawn out excursion groups, unfortunately there seemed to be much less order to this lot than any time during my high school years. Firstly, there was no visible teacher presence, this could be explained by the general demographic of P.E. teachers being fairly young, and often fresh out of university. Generally they do look a bit older than the students and look mildly authoritative.
Unfortunately there was no such presence in this group and it showed. Road crossings were amazingly disorganised and dangerous. Coranderrk and Ballumbir Streets intersect in a Y shape, with Ballumbir merging with Coranderrk to form a new length of Coranderrk. Naturally, this is where the group decided to cross, seemingly running across the road and dodging cars. If this move was initiated by a leading teacher then I am very concerned about the example they are imparting on their young and impressionable students. Even worse still, no teacher attempted to stop this from happening.
Following this bizarre and dangerous road crossing, many students seemingly disappeared into Glebe Park and the surrounding walkways, and headed in the general direction of Civic. Admittedly a roll call at the pool would have picked up these truants, but it is still unacceptable that this could happen so easily.
It would appear that Campbell High School’s P.E. teachers have forgotten their duty of care, and need to be reminded of school policies in relation to excursions. If an accident had occurred, which it nearly did, the consequences and negative publicity would have made them wake up. None the less, prevention is better than cure, and I will be sending a copy of this article to Campbell High School as a courtesy to allow them to review policies, and take the appropriate action to help ensure the safety of their students.
I’m certain that somebody will now tell me that high school students should be capable of crossing the road safely, and I agree, they should, but peer pressure and general teenage silliness does get in the way of clear judgements from time to time, and it is the job of the supervising teachers to keep this to a minimum.
Whilst Campbell High is my old high school, I am not picking on them simply because I used to go there. In this case I am able to draw on my experiences there and make a comparison, however I would be equally critical of any school that allowed such behaviour.
Samuel
February 24th, 2006 at 03:35pm
The Canberra Capitals have beaten the Dandenong Rangers 68-55 in the WNBL (Women’s National Basketball League) grand final.
This from our friends at The Age
Canberra wins WNBL grand final
Lauren Jackson has spearheaded the Canberra Capitals to their fourth women’s national basketball title in seven years with a 68-55 victory over Dandenong Rangers.
Jackson scored a game-high 24 points and 12 rebounds in the WNBL final with 13 of her points coming in a blistering second quarter performance as the Capitals raced to a 14-point halftime lead.
The Rangers powered back early in the third quarter, closing to within three points and keeping Jackson scoreless for the entire term.
But Canberra steadied and closed the match out in front of a sellout 2,200 crowd at the Dandenong Basketball Stadium.
Jackson received great support inside from fellow Opals giant Jenny Whittle (12 points and nine rebounds) while guard Kellie Abrams scored 14 – including two important late third quarter baskets.
For the Rangers, Caitlin Ryan and Carly Wilson top-scored with 17 points apiece.
The defeat ended the Rangers’ recent dominance of the WNBL after they had won the past two championships.
For the Capitals, this season’s victory adds to their 1999-00, 2001-02 and 2002-03 titles.
The grand final is expected to be Jackson’s final WNBL match for the foreseeable future as she concentrates on her American WNBA commitments with Seattle.
I caught the last ten minutes or so of the TV coverage on the ABC, and was rather surprised to find erstwhile AFL commentator for Seven and ABC News Radio was the main commentator and host of the ABC basketball coverage. It’s good to see Drew still doing what he loves, and I hope he comes back to Seven when they resume coverage of AFL in 2007. Drew was looking well too.
Update: ABC2 (Available on free to air digital and possibly pay TV) will be replaying the full two hours of live coverage tomorrow at 11am. I’ll probably tune in as I would like to see the match.
Samuel
February 18th, 2006 at 06:51pm
It was about 12:30 when I finished lunch and caught a 116 bus (an orange one) to Belconnen, having forgotten my headphones I carried out my backup radio listening plan of turning the volume right down, putting the speaker to my ear and turning it up just enough for me to hear it clearly, at this volume it is impossible to hear the radio any further than 10cm from the speaker.
This early bus trip meant that I was well ahead of schedule, so I decided to have a coffee, but on my way across the bridge from the Belconnen bus interchange to the shopping centre I noticed this fantastic view down Benjamin Way, the road I would later walk down.
I went in to Westfield Belconnen and went to Cafe Mochalat (oddly enough, this cafe was the focus of a discussion I had been a part of earlier in the day where nobody could remember the name) where I had a flat white and a jam tart. I then visited an ATM and its associated queue as I realised I had almost run out of money, not that I spend much, but you never know when you might need it.
At 1PM (well, a tad after, Kris was already into the news) I left Westfield and made the journey down Benjamin Way. Near the end of the road to my right were the Belconnen Fresh Food Markets and beyond that Bunnings Belconnen, I wasn’t sure if the carpark was open at both ends though, so I opted to walk the long way around, onto Belconnen Way and then into Bunnings. I’m glad I did as it provided me with some very nice views.
Firstly Bunnings from near the corner of Benjamin Way and Belconnen Way
Then Bunnings from near the traffic lights shown in the previous picture.
Followed by the grass around Bunnings and its carpark, which was provided by Canturf (a Canberra grass business), hopefully they got a discount for showing the Canturf signs, of which the photographed one had fallen over.
Next up an overview of the Canturf lawn, the carpark and the Bunnings Belconnen store itself.
All Bunnings stores seem to have the same exterior, including the slogan “Lowest Prices Are Just The Beginning…”
Yet another angle, the radio of the pictured ute was tuned to 2CC and was clearly audible, when I heard it I checked to see if it was a 2CC staff member, which it wasn’t.
I started to have a look around Bunnings, and ran into some people I know, who were doing some shopping, they were very impressed with the new store, I accompanied them on their shopping adventure, before going with them to a coffee shop in the Belconnen Fresh Food Markets.
After this they left with their purchases and I returned the trolley to Bunnings and resumed my tour, I had finished all of two aisles when I spotted movement at the 2CC stand in the form of Mike Frame and 2CC office manager (whoops, sorry, I’m bad with names sometimes). I went over to say hello, and before long was embarking on a store tour with Framey…this was 2:30. Framey and I had a bit of a chat, mostly about the new Bunnings store, but also about lawn bowls and what we’d been up to lately. Whilst we were in the garden section we spotted some bonzai, which is when Framey came up with his catchcry for the day that “everything’s big at Bunnings except the bonzai”.
Between then and 2:55 I acted as “Mike Frame’s Shadow” and there were many chats with many people, including a Bunnings staff member who had never heard of 2CC before, and correctly guessed that John Laws was on there…well, more or less, I think Lawsie’s name just flew off his tongue at the mention of talk radio. A few familiar faces turned up including Kevin Woolfe (Aka “The Wolfman” or “Woolfie”) and 2CC’s manager, David Leitch, who seemed to have a smile on his face all day.
Sometime around 2:55 Framey sent me off to get him a can of Coke, which I did and returned during the news, just in time to take two photos of the 2CC Bunnings balloons, and to get a video of Framey’s first moment on air (the voice before the voice over is that of newsreader Kris McKenzie).
(Note about videos, my camera is terribly inefficient when it comes to video bit rates, needlessly enocoding at almost double the required bitrate (maybe it saves on processing power). I have re-encoded the video in a number of formats with minimal to no quality loss. In all cases, the MPEG 4 video is the smallest, followed by the quicktime video, followed by the Real Media, followed by the Windows Media. In all cases, the MPEG4 is the best quality, followed by Quicktime, Windows Media and Real Media.)
Watch Framey’s first moments on air from Bunnings Belconnen
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A shortwhile thereafter they had their first OB guest, Bruce Huskings, complex manager of Bunnings Belconnen (I only remember his name because I wrote it down). In this photo from left to right, Bruce from Bunnings, Mike Frame and Kevin Woolfe.
There is also a short video of this interview where Bruce and Mike are alking about some of Bunnings Belconnen’s Grand Opening activities (Humphrey gets a mention). Note that this is before they fixed the PA so that the speakers emit the sounds from the microphones.
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The lights in the background were turned on prior to the beginning of the broadcast, which had me wondering if they were to a reverse television thing where, instead of having stage lights pointing at their faces (and everything else), they lit up their backs…I think too much, I must have gone potty from all the pots in the garden area (third time I’ve used that joke in the last 24 hours, I will desist now).
Here we have a random video clip of Mike summarising some of the guests who would be on the show later in the day…and the PA works.
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The “coming off delay” seven seconds of silence prior to the 3:30 news gave everyone a fright, thankfully Gareth The Tech had dropped by and was able to reassure everyone that it was normal. Recent commenter T-Bone also dropped by.
I decided to take a couple photos of the store, firstly looking lengthways down Bunnings from near one end of the store.
And one looking in a direction at right angles to the last photo (it doesn’t give a proper perspective of the size due to a zoom accident).
Then we have the video which I think is the best one of the lot, and I am very proud of it. I successfully guessed the final ad in the ad break, and pressed record right at the start of the intro, I then zoomed in one Mike as remained zoomed in on him as he spoke. A passing trolley moving stock can be heard at one stage, and the camera did its “overly cautious about having enough battery power to save the video trick” and cut the video off about two seconds early, but I still think this is the best video of the lot.
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Real Media
During the ad break aroud 3:45 I decided to make my way home, and said goodbye to those who were still there (and waved to those deep in conversation), once out of the store I turned my radio back on, and started walking back to the Belconnen bus interchange. On my way, I took this photo of Bunnings Belconnen (and the Belconnen Fresh Food Markets’ carpark).
It was around 4PM when I got back to the bus interchange, I soon discovered that the next scheduled orange bus would arrive at 4:30 or thereabouts, as I had some time on my hands I decided to avoid the green buses and wait for an orange one. Around 4:15 I gave Mike Frame a call, in which I jokingly informed him that it’s a good thing that David Young (2CC’s gardener) is in Africa and not in the garden section at Bunnings, because he will come back from Africa.
Some time close to 5PM I reached home and only heard a few more minutes of the OB, John B1_B5 informs us that there was a “music break” at one stage when the OB signal was lost, I can only assume that this was some time after the 5:05 “by the seat of their pants” appearance of the clown and the man on stilts, as I didn’t hear any break in transmission before then.
Anyway, well done to 2CC for the outside broadcast, and well done to Bunnings for their brand new Belconnen store, it is absolutely fantastic and I recomend that you take a look if you have some spare time or some hardware needs in or around the ACT. Mike Frame was right when he said that you could spend half a day walking around that place, there is just so much to see.
Samuel
February 11th, 2006 at 01:36am
I’m going to make this post very very brief as I have a lot to do today and need to get started shortly.
Today will contain my first CIT class, which is scheduled from 9am-2pm (hopefully including some breaks). After this I will be heading to Bunnings Belconnen’s grand opening where Mike Frame will be running a 2CC outside broadcast.
Mike will be on-air from 3pm-6pm Canberra time (GMT+11) so why don’t you give him a call and say g’day. Of course it would help if you have something to contribute to the program, perhaps you have a view on a news issue that you would like to express. Give Mike a call on 62554444. Mike quite correctly states that he has “an open line and an open mind”, so I’m sure he would love to hear what it is that you have to say.
I will (hopefully) post a review of my day this evening, it should be quite a day.
Samuel
February 10th, 2006 at 07:27am
According to the UEA website, the process used for this digging is Horizontal Directional Drilling. According to a person I know who knows about these sort of things, the direction of the drilling is controlled by water pressure, which is why it all starts on an angle but ends up going horizontally.
Anyway, a photo and some video of the Horizontal Directional Drilling machine in action.
And a short video of the Horizontal Directional Drilling machine in action, including a UEA truck driving past.
WMV Format (Windows Video)
MOV Format (Quicktime Video)
Samuel
February 8th, 2006 at 09:32pm
Here are a couple photos I took yesterday of Nattie enjoying life. First up, we have her giving her teeth a good workout by chewing on a yummy bone.
And after all that hard work, time for a nap in the sun.
Unlike previous days, yesterday was a good day for taking a nap in the sun, with the temperature only reaching 22.9 degrees celcius at 2:18pm, which is close to the time I took the photos.
Samuel
February 8th, 2006 at 08:05am
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