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wildgazelle

Listed below are comments made by wildgazelle between Sunday, 10th August 2008 and Friday, 8th May 2009.

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Australia's underwhelming capital 05:18am on 08 May 2009 I'd suggest the problem with Canberra is population. Great, interesting cities are generally more populous than Canberra is, or, at the least, have a greater population density or regional population. Canberra is, at heart, a large provincial city, and not a capital, as it doesn't have the strong regional focus a capital does.

It doesn't really have a feeder region: Sydney has the Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands full of smaller centres which feed into Sydney. Canberra, on the other hand, has Queanbeyan, and, if we're generous, Yass.

If there was a concerted effort to ensure more people moved to Canberra, making the city centre more dense, and ensuring it was a city of substance instead of a city where most of the population is employed in public service, it could easily meet its potential as a great city. For the moment, on the other hand, I'm quite content spending my time in this fair city, even if there are times when it feels deserted (Saturday and Sunday nights) or bland, for the mere fact that parts of it are beautiful and the whole place seems very relaxed.
Not the brightest bulbs in Sydney 3:06pm on 19 Apr 2009 I'll admit this first. I'm a Canberrean, and before that from rural NSW, so I covet the very idea of public transport that doesn't require waiting an hour in a concrete shelter for a bus. What I'd give for a tram or train network, no matter how faulty...

Anyway, the biggest problem with Sydney in my viewpoint is that as a city is it a highly complacent one - it releases that things have been good for it in the past, but assumes that the future will be equally good without any effort being required. The last major rail infrastructure project was opened this year, but was opened late and only runs as a shuttle service. Before this, the Olympic Park and Airport rail stations and before this... well, not much since the 1980s.

Road infrastructure seems focussed on providing radial tollways, which by their very radial nature move further and further apart as they go deeper and deeper into the suburbs. These suburbs grow ridiculously quick (as in the Hills district) and seem poorly planned at best (case in point: Glenmore Park, a suburb near Penrith, with no rail station, no tram link, and a road system designed in such a way that bus access is near impossible).

The health and education systems, while still very good, are starting to fray around the edges due mainly to lack of funds (as education and health are the majority of the NSW budget).

Primarily, though, Sydneysiders do not think that they are being hard done by, because, on the whole, life have been good to them. It will likely continue to be good. It could, however, be better, if Sydneysiders realised that complacency does not in the main get results.

Oh well, it's summed up by the fuller version of the phrase featured in your blog: as the Whitlams sing on the classic Sydney album, "Love This City", you gotta love this city, for its beauty, but not its brain.
The stunted country 1:20pm on 16 Oct 2008 This parochialism is countered by the viewpoint that many of us consider that the three-tier governmental system is ridiculously flawed, and that a two-tier system (a federal government and regional governments) would be a better option then the current arrangement. Nevertheless, the state-based provincialism and the "tensions" between the states, while they exist, are generally only taken jokingly.

Oh, and Knappstein? There's better beers than that out there, I'll tell you...
Which sports would you add to the Games? 5:30pm on 10 Aug 2008 The most boring sports to watch are those with very little danger/speed (i.e. sailing. Honestly, really boring and [when there's no wind] a bit of a lottery).

So I suggest some "fun" sports: paintball, jai alai, street luge, and some form of gauntlet running (through a course occupied with tigers, swinging blades, fire jets, etc.).

Oh, and for the Monty Python fans, hide and seek...

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