BADELAIDE-Complaints about Adelaide City and Suburbs

APRIL 2023 RECENT UPDATE ON KING WILLIAM ST AND THE REST OF THE CITY
25-4-2023: This page is 11 years old and things are obviously only getting worse, if you believe what is written in 'The Advertiser" of 19/4/2023. The littering is worse, the cleaning less and the homeless more noticeable. Why do homeless people have to shelter outside businesses on the footpath in King William St, one of our most important thoroughfares? Police need to move them on. Where did they go before? They do not have the right to make the whole town look ugly, especially the main streets. Very simple motel type rooms could be built in the CBD and homeless bussed to them if they are on the streets. They could in turn be expected to clean up the city streets if they are capable of work. These shelters should employ staff including social workers to manage behaviour and work on improving the life of the homeless. It just bugs me that so much money is wasted on stupid, meaningless events when that money could be put to such good use in housing and improving the obvious problems in the city. Here is the article from 'The Advertiser" about the state of our city. I was shocked to drive along King William St yesterday and see people sleeping on the footpath around 11 am.

One thing that does annoy me is that business owners do not seem to make themselves responsible for their environs. They should be out sweeping and washing down their footpaths each morning when they open. If they don't have the facilities to do this, the council should make it compulsory for businesses to have the needed taps and equipment. A few sprays with a hose might encourage stragglers to be on their way too.

And don't get me started on Victoria Square. When I drove past it was fenced off once again for some event with the same old ugly metal fencing on huge orange or blue cement blocks to hold it in place. Year after year this persists. They do try to string advertisng banners around the fences but it looks bad. When they spent millions on re-vamping the square, I said that they needed to construct a permanent form of fencing that could be raised/installed on demand. Perhaps now all they need are some holes to put the fence posts in so that they can get rid of the footings, and fencing that looks decent. Maybe they could try not to put the temporary toilets all around the edge of the square looking disgusting and organise them somewhere else, or just build a lot of decent looking permanent toilets and, gasp, employ full time staff to manage and clean them, with the help and support of police. These things used to happen and now the excuse is that it is too expensive to employ staff, but it is also expensive to clean up mess and lives.

MADELAIDE EVENTS
Every year in February and March we have so much on on in Adelaide that March is now called Mad March. Events include the Festival Fringe, Festival of Arts, Writers' Week, Adelaide Cup and Womadelaide. It makes for excitement and a lively city but I don't know why so much has to be packed into such a short space of time. The weather in April is usually much nicer, for a start.
Events have been sadly cancelled during Covid 19, in 2020 and 2021.

NORTH TERRACE
March 2018: Much activity moved to North Tce where there was a sensational light show featured on the facades of many of the old buildings like Elder Hall, Conservatorium, University front office, Museum etc. Unfortunately the new tram extension was also under construction so metal fencing surrounded huge poles on the footpath which had something to do with the tram, I suppose. There were inconspicuous black boxes for the light show but the jolly folk of the fringe plastered them all over with fringe posters and left any unwanted posters ripped up on the ground. There were poles and cables and temporary booking offices, all sorts of mess-with not a single pop-up catering van in sight for the thousands of thirsty sightseers. Our lovely elegant street looked like a tip. Maybe one festival they will not be doing roadworks, NBN, major renovations etc in the centre of the city during the festival season. I'd like to see that.

VICTORIA SQUARE
5-3-2018: Went past Victoria Square and it actually looked neat. The Fringe and Festival options have moved elsewhere. There is too much cement, not enough small trees, shrubs and flowers and it is baking on a hot day. Who can believe they spent so much on the upgrade?
6-3-2016: To be fair, Victoria Square at rest, after years of debate and redesigning, looks quite nice. The fountain is atractive in its new location, the seating is being used and it is generally a tranquil space, though there is far too much hot concrete on the northern side. The cycads struggle to survive but have been replaced and maintained where necessary, at a cost. I don't believe the wooden seating here and in Rundle Mall is at all practical as it is discoloured already from the weather. Still, perhaps they will be able to paint it in the future, if necessary. The main complaint I have about the area is the frequent pop up food vans. Old caravans with gas bottles hanging off the back and cords going everywhere are parked in the cement wilderness where there once used to be a large bed of flowers at the Northern end. They may think they're hip, but visitors must wonder why we allow derelicts to camp in the centre of town. If you are going to pursue this pop up madness, have pretty or smart or arty vans, manage the rubbish and electricity out of sight and make them a feature not an eyesore.

March 2016: Same old story with the Festival Fringe this year. The Royal Croquet Club is now occupying both upper and lower Victoria Square in an outbreak of ugliness, though the south side looks much better than the north. They've constructed raised seating at the northernmost point of the square so that the view looking down King William Street is of rough metal and wooden beams holding up the undersides of chairs. It towers way above the fence and is accompanied by the usual tin sheds and portaloos. The rusty metal lean-tos constructed towards the middle of the square look positively artistic in comparison.
Peter Goers has again attacked the appearance of the square in his Sunday Mail article on Feb 20, 2016, but the best column was that by Deborah Bogle in SA Weekend of Feb 27-28, in which she pointed out that if you are having visitors for a party at home, you do your best to spruce things up and make the garden look as pretty as possible. This certainly hasn't happened in Adelaide. In every city you visit overseas, there is an effort to beautify with hanging baskets and potplants-New York, San Francisco, Karlstad in Sweden. I'm not sure if greenies are responsible here, the idea being to plant native grasses and save water or something. This is a big city. Most of the country is covered with native grasses and gum trees which are beautiful in a country setting, but in town we need greenery and flowers and tough plants. I see roses and beautiful hibiscuses surviving on almost no water, lots of beautiful plants that have proven their toughness and adaptability. Please Adelaide Council, get back to planting cooling, attractive plants and ditch the dead grasses.
It's as if the Adelaide city council or whoever is in charge of roadworks all over Adelaide, asks when is the time they can create the maximum ugliness and cause the most inconvenience to city goers. Hence, the war memorial on North Tce is a work site. The whole of West Tce is under reconstruction. The Garden of Unearthly Delights is surrounded on the North Tce side by a fence lined with what looks like black plastic bin bags.
We went to Writers' Week and they go to a great deal of effort to make things look attractive, but there, on the footpath which runs behind Government house and has done so for as long as I can remember, some guru interested in health and safety had erected 3 yellow signs, drunkenly tilted and held up by large metal disks. 2 said PEDESTRIANS and one said PEDESTRIANS WATCH YOUR STEP. In the narrow space beside them, pedestrians were just able to squeeze past. The path looked as it always looks. There didn't seem to be large holes or broken bottles along the path. What were the pedestrians meant to watch?


Photos above: Two of 3 meaningful pedestrian signs; a random detour sign left at the corner of North Tce next to the Boer War memorial; Croquet Club on the north side of the square

March, 2015: Once again Victoria Square has been transformed for the Royal Croquet Club. The northern and southern parts of the square have the indescribably ugly fences. Added to that are temporary corrugated Bianco Co. iron huts and a bevy of Portaloos. What a delightful look in the centre of our city. If they (The council? The Festival of Arts Committee?) are going to build temporary premises for a multitude of outdoor events to be held in city parks throughout the year, they must come up with alternatives which are aesthetically pleasing, or build them somewhere else. I have written to the council suggesting that there should be permanent holes for temporary fence posts around parks and similar provision could be made for other temporary constructions-the wiring and plumbing must be in the ground ready for use when the need arises. All buildings should look good or be banned.
1-3-2014: Victoria Square is transformed for the Fringe into the Royal Adelaide Croquet Club. It is exciting, but contained within an ugly temporary fence. I can see that they probably have to fence off our public land because of all the stuff in there for the festival, but it is not a good look. I am still waiting to see the completed square as it has been fenced off continually, for finishing off, during the Tour Down Under and now for the Festival.
26-12-2013: Quite a bit of the walkway is in, there are patches of bright green lawn with sprinklers pumping on water and the amphitheatre is taking shape. Along the tram side of the northern part of Victoria Square they have planted many palms (cycads) like those in North Tce, which look good. Things are moving along quickly now. At the edges of the southern side of Victoria Square (more like Victoria Diamond), however, are unattractive native grasses. What botanical expert decreed we must plant these spiky, dying off grasses everywhere? They may be natives but they look like dead weeds. There are many lovely small shrubs which could be planted instead-what about hardy coprosmas?
22-11-2013: Huge progress has been made and the Square is taking shape. They are paving the northern end around the Christmas tree and the framework for the walkway around the square is up. Apparently the area is going to be a venue for the Festival fringe in February so they are moving fast.
1-8-2013: It's a wasteland. There must be enough underground plumbing for thousands. The rest is holes and piles of dirt.
6-4-2013: The best trees for
Victoria Square debate continues in The Advertiser. Can't they just check street trees around Adelaide and decide from that? Jacarandas are lovely, but messy, slow growing and not deciduous. I definitely do not recommend any gums as they are incredibly messy too and you do not want that in a limited space. Plane trees are very nice but perhaps you could have 2 or 3 different trees. People speak very highly of ornamental pears. Liquidambers are glorious and deciduous but they have big prickly pods. John Lamb is so right when he asks for deciduous trees-sun in winter and shade in summer.
20-3-2013: Hooray! The council has listened to complaints and has agreed that lemon scented gums are not the best trees to have around the events lawn in Victoria Square. Of course, on radio this morning an expert was declaiming that we need Victoria Square to be significantly Australian. That is so stupid-we are Australian, we don't have to prove it all the time by only planting Australian grasses and trees. Many native trees and shrubs like melaleucas and grevilleas become very ugly and there are lots of gum trees in parks around Adelaide anyway. Go and see gum trees in the open countryside around Strathalbyn. They are glorious there.
13-3-2013: The whole fence around Vic Square is covered by black plastic, to hide the fact that the current trees are being removed, no doubt. I remember when those trees were put in during the last redevelopment and they have never looked very good. I cannot believe that any urban planner would suggest lemon scented gums to take their place, however. The trees recently planted along Cross Road are beautiful and would be perfect for the square. Just because a plant is native does not mean that it is attractive or user friendly. The appearance of so many public places has been ruined by ugly native grasses, which mostly look no better than dead weeds. The centre of the city is not some untouched wilderness and if it is going to be torn up, at least put in plants which are attractive and manageable.
6-3-2013: In his opinion column in the Messenger press, Matthew Abraham says it all (but I said it first). He has also written about the Mall's balls and I loved his column on shopping (nothing to do with Mad March except that it happened in the city).
5-3-2013: The Mayor has apparently turned the first sod to start the official renovation of Victoria Square. The proposed lemon scented gums are the worst possible choice. We were foolish enough to plant a small gum in our yard and it is constant work. They are lovely somewhere out in the country where the endlessly shedding bark, falling branches and gumnuts don't matter, but in a confined space, over grass or concrete, they are a nightmare. Maybe they don't need much water, but the area around them will need major upkeep forever. These urban types don't have any gardens, so haven't learnt about trees the hard way.

I agree with an article about the Royal Croquet Club by Peter Goers. It is outrageous that they have to pay thousands to replace the grass after the Festival, and Victoria Square looks so ugly while it is on. Go away.


Photos show the orange that plagues Adelaide. The minute something happens, be it roadwork, a missing paver or elecrical work, orange people emerge and drape everything in sight in orange plastic mesh, and set up posts of orange and orange witches' cones, which remain in place for months.

FORMER REGISTRY OFFICE
I realised I didn't have a nice picture of the Registry Office where we were married in Adelaide in 1974. I knew it was no longer a registry office but was saddened and amazed to see it was a drop in centre for migrants or refugees. This beautiful Victorian building, originally a bank of South Australia, was narrowly saved from demolition by a Sydney firm which wanted to build a tower block on the site, and purchased by the state government in 1971 following an extensive campaign by the public. Named Edmund Wright House after the original architect, this glorious building should house historical documents or become a museum for post or transport, and be used to attract visitors to the city. It would especially be a perfect place for the Tourist Bureau. It seems ironic that one of the best examples of Victorian architecture in the city is being used to provide a service for newcomers to the city who have, as yet, no involvement with it and probably little interest in history at this stage of their life's journey.

RUNDLE MALL
The council is desperate to 'reposition' Rundle Mall in the heart of the city to make it a 'world class shopping destination, unique, captivating and connected' and to future proof it. We have travelled extensively over many years, and I feel qualified to say that there is nothing wrong with Rundle Mall that a bit of simple care and maintenance wouldn't fix.
4-3-2016: There was only one big hole being worked on in Rundle Mall today. The street looked busy and lively with cafes and vans, the Fringe stage and booking office and several good buskers. The wooden seating was totally unoccupied in the boiling heat and people stuck to the shade on the side of the street.
5-3-2014: The Mall is buzzing with activity for the Festival and full of people but I still hate the stupid pavers. It looks like they ran out of the right bricks and filled up random spaces with whatever came to hand. It enrages me every time I look at them-zigzags, stripes, waves-there are so many patterns that would make sense but not the current mish mash. They are covered with sticky patches of food and drink wherever you walk. Maybe drinks should be banned in the mall if idiots continue to splat them everywhere. The bins are excruciatingly ugly too. The council should conceal them behind wooden slats like those used on the benches, not highlight them like industrial waste bins.
19-12-2013: The council need to be getting the gum off the pavers immediately each night and there should be much more advertising against littering. Whatever happened to "Keep SA beautiful?" Where is KESAB when it is needed?
24-11-2013: In his column in the 'Sunday Mail' of 24-11-2013, Peter Goers explains that the patchy mall paving is deliberate, but it certainly doesn't look like it to the average pedestrian. Couldn't they have had strips of a different colour or some comprehensible design? The council MUST also see that the pavers are kept clean. The new trees look good though small, but the weird wood and metal 3-tiered seat will be unbearable in summer with the metal parts too hot to touch, and there is not a tree in sight to shade it. I'm not knocking the council for re-vamping the Mall as it did look tired and messy, but the trees already there were quite new and perfectly OK and should have been retained.

TRANSPORT & PARKING
Really, the core problem with attracting people into Rundle Mall is parking. People aren't going to the city because it is easier to shop in suburban shopping centres with free car parking. The Adelaide City Council needs to provide affordable parking in the city and people will come. I think it should be for a minimum of 3 hours because that is enough for shopping and a quick lunch, or lunch and a quick look at the shops. Most people could probably afford to pay $10-$12 for that-but not much more. The mall is not the problem, getting there is.
On the other hand, the council can just keep working on improving and maintaining things in the city with plenty of attractions and the public will come via good public transport. The revitalised tram has been a wonderful success and free buses are a great way to move around the city if people know about them.

CLEAN UP THE CITY
Nov 2012: Time and again they talk about revamping our main shopping mall in Adelaide. We were there on Saturday night and it was quite nice. They don't need to redo it, just look after it.

  • Clean the bins out as often as is needed to keep them from overflowing, even during the evening, and especially for Saturday and Sunday trading.
  • Paint the posts, lightpoles, bins, benches often so that they look fresh and clean.
  • Have people picking up loose litter all the time, even on Saturday and Sunday-especially on Saturday and Sunday, when visitors most often are there.
  • Clean that bloody chewing gum off the footpath and greater mall as soon as it appears. I never even see people chewing gum in Adelaide so I don't know where it comes from. If people can't do the right thing, ban chewing gum and impose a fine just like in Singapore and use the people caught chewing to clean it up.
  • The trees are looking good but we need more flowers. Take a lesson from England where public places are adorned with glorious hanging baskets and big, 3 tiered pots of flowers.
  • Put up some NEW, FRESH Christmas decorations. This must be about the 5th year in a row for those big, ugly baubles and candy canes.
  • Move the real rubbish bin away from the lovely pigs and let their bin be obviously ornamental only! They are one of the favourite attractions in the mall yet scattered with rubbish.
  • Fine more people for dropping rubbish. No one ever polices this. We have gone backwards in relation to public cleanliness. Whatever happened to KESAB? The areas around bins are also disgusting with black, foetid looking stains. The Adelaide city council should be doing much more to make the city look clean, fresh and attractive. Don't spend millions on re-doing things, just look after what we have.
  • Make sure all the shops are occupied-you may have to subsidise rental to attract some businesses. If they are not occupied, make sure the windows are attractive by advertising other businesses or tourist sites.
  • Please do not renovate, repair or dig up anything and cover the city with ugly, horrible, stupid, orange plastic mesh during the festival season, February and March, 2013-like last year. Just keep things clean and tidy during the busiest time of the year when the most visitors come to the city.
  • Get some pretty new banners and flags for King William Street.

    LITTER AND VOMIT
    Where the council has lost the plot is in maintaining the city so that it looks clean and pleasant. In Rundle Mall, rubbish bins are often overflowing onto the ground. All around the rubbish bins are spilt liquids and disgusting food stains. Footpaths are spotted with black chewing gum and no scrubbing ever seems to happen so that if someone vomits, the stain is there forever. Outside of shops and in alleys, dirty, big and rusty rubbish bins overflow with plastic and boxes. There's graffiti on side walls and bins in many places around the city. Light poles and posts and benches are scratched and worn. Maintenance is expensive but redevelopment on the scale that is happening costs many millions. If you go to Disneyland or Legoland you won't see a paper on the ground. Everything is beautiful and meticulously maintained. There are hanging baskets of flowers, as there are in many big city centres around the world. In contrast, Adelaide currently looks disgusting.
    King William Street is a disgrace. I know which bank is the worst offender. How many million profit do they make each year? Maybe they could employ a cleaner who does out front too. There is a bus stop in front so perhaps some more benches and bins need to be provided, together with a few reminders about litter. Of course, it doesn't help that time after time we have to watch the stars of TV shows such as 'Madmen' and 'Scott and Bailey'(2015) merrily chucking their cigarettes on the ground wherever they go. Can we get over the idea that tough and gritty is showing people smoking and littering, especially when they are police? Caught the tram to the city from the tram stop over South Road. An Adelaide Metro employee waiting there with colleagues, squashed out a cigarette butt on the ground and promptly kicked it onto the tram line where it joined hundreds of others. There are 2 bins on the platform with special attachments for putting out cigarettes and disposing of them correctly available. How's that for setting an example?


    CLEANING UP ADELAIDE
    There is no publicity anymore about keeping the place clean, be it SA in general or Adelaide City in particular, no signs, no advertising campaigns, apparently no
    KESAB, although their website says that cigarette butts are the largest source of litter in the world. Websites are good but if you are the kind of person who drops butts, you probably wouldn't look at Notagoodlook. KESAB needs TV ads and hoardings to get the message across.
    Once a year there is Clean up Australia Day. Every day should be a clean up Australia Day. (And I said it before they had it on their website.)
    Once upon a time, shopkeepers cleaned the area in front of their shops. It was part of the deal. It would be good to see this done by businesses all over Adelaide again. Some soap and water would go a long way towards improving footpaths. The council also needs to have machines that scrub around bins and gutters, not just sweep up rubbish.
    Teams of offenders on community service could descend on the city every night and spend 2 or 3 hours scraping and cleaning chewing gum off the footpaths before it spreads everywhere.
    Footpath cafes need to be more careful in cleaning tables and surrounds.
    We need a new and forceful government education campaign about littering and cleanliness-TV ads works the best.
    On an individual basis people must not litter, take care not to spill food and drink, put rubbish properly in bins and sometimes even push the things overflowing from bins down-often a foot on a bin full of paper hand towels will stop them falling all over the floor in public toilets, for example. Look around you and do something positive.

    WHO IS TO BLAME?
    The council alone is not responsible for the state of the city and it is not just up to them to keep it clean. Manners have changed. Where once people would sit inside at a table and eat, it is apparently now acceptable to be walking around eating and drinking. On the benches in the mall, people sit cramming overstuffed wraps into their mouths, with carrot and mayonnaise oozing out all over the place. Teenagers with burgers and chips and litres of drink scatter debris willy nilly. And who is chewing all that gum and dropping it on the ground? I can only think it is all the former smokers, who are used to dropping their butts on the ground. I never see anyone chewing gum and yet apparently they must since it makes a mess of every footpath in the city, from the black slate tiles in King William Street to the motley tiles along the mall and the new rather pretty mosaic look paving in Hindley Street. Gum is a menace and should be made illegal as in Singapore. On the other hand, littering is illegal and yet no one is ever prosecuted here. Everybody needs to take care of their surroundings and not leave it to others. Don't just drop cigarettes near the expensive cigarette disposal containers the council put on bins in the city, you actually have to put the cigarettes IN them. Wrote a letter to the paper about cigarette butts but it did not get printed-not a glamorous topic, obviously.
    26-2-13: Had lunch at a small cafe with a few tables next to pretty greenery in brick planters near North Tce, looked over and counted 15 cigarette butts thrown in the bark chips next to my table. Disgusting pigs to do that where others are eating.

    KING WILLIAM ROAD AND UNLEY REDEVELOPMENT
    8-2-2020:
    A trader on King William Rd has come out and said that he is moving because of the stupid parking. I have looked but daren't try because I'm scared of hitting the big steel bollards on the embankments where you are supposed to park. When I was at the doctor's last week I saw a man in front to-ing and fro-ing at least 8 times to get in and he still wasn't happy.
    13-01-2020: Well, you can park on the relevant section of King William Rd now, if you feel comfortable mounting very high concrete embankments and parking between large metal bollards set out in the middle of the concrete. It's just like having to pass your learner's driving test every time and not good for blood pressure if you're visiting the doctor!

    27-11-2019: It's a while since I've complained, but the fury has been building. What's happening on King William Road, Adelaide, South Australia, as explained in a letter to the editor in 'The Advertiser' on 26-11-2019, is a joke. I have been a patient at the doctor's surgery there for 40 years and now I have to park at least 2 blocks away in a distant side street, if I'm lucky.
    The surgery does have a car park and that's another huge complaint. If there are only 8 people in the waiting room, why is their carpark ALWAYS full too? Maybe they could police it for the comfort of their patients and kick out whoever is parking there illegally and shouldn't be. Patients could be issued with a pass to put in the car window when they attend and others could be towed.
    Anyway, back to the main issue. I never had a problem finding a park on busy King William Road and often even got one in front of the dr's surgery. Now they have done up the street so that there is no parking, with big cement islands planted with flowers, reaching out into whole traffic lanes such that it is really one lane travel only both ways along the street. The flowers look pretty but, quite frankly, I have better things to do than sit out among the traffic sipping tea (see my tea complaints below on page) and looking like a twit on King William Road.
    There is a problem with planners. They do not seem to live in the real world. Just because things look good they may not be functional. This area is massively inbuilt and the road carries a huge amount of traffic (or did). What is the point of attracting business to the street and then not having anywhere for parking? The poor businesses there must be in despair. Perhaps there are enough locals to keep them going, but I doubt it.
    The whole of Unley, and indeed, Adelaide, is in the grip of the worst urban infill mania since the 1960s. Beautiful houses are being flattened and ugly bunkers built on the large blocks, often 4 townhouses replacing one house and many trees. All along nearby Cross Road, blocks are being cleared at an unseemly rate.
    In our street, sadly one of the ugliest in our whole area because of rented and unimproved houses, as the Unley Council judged in their assessment a couple of years ago, new occupants of the maisonette opposite promptly pulled down a new fence put in to sell the property, and erected an enormous, black steel fence for which they were given permission by the council, I presume. They have 2 vehicles, one an SUV, and they choose not to use their carport in front of the maisonette or their driveway, and park in the street, probably because they have a dog and it is too much trouble to open the big, ugly fence. Our houses are near the corner and reversing from the driveway has become an ordeal because you have to avoid missing the 2 cars plus the cars of their friends and not be hit by other cars speeding around a blind corner. They are not always there, but the point is, none of them need to be there at all.
    The Unley Council can't simply allow numerous dwellings to be built where once there was one, and not insist that there is parking for at least 2-3 cars per unit, because that is the reality today whether they like it or not. Unley streets are crammed with cars, many from outer suburbs catching transport into town, but many also belonging to occupants parking in the street when they could be using their own driveways and yards to park. We are not living in London or New York where millions of people are packed in like sardines and it's stupid for this kind of frenetic development to be happening and changing our whole suburban way of life.

    GRAFFITI (again)
    5-3-2016: Happy to report that the fences are being kept almost graffiti free. It is all olive green paint now, no cream remaining, and the maintenance is working well.
    26-10-2015: The fences are staying graffiti free across the open bike path at the end of the street, possibly because they've given up on the fences further along where they are hidden from easy sight.
    18-10-2015: The fences were done a couple of weeks ago, just past the bike path opening, and again look very nice.
    7-9-2015: The olive green fences are covered with cream paint overlaid with innumerable graffiti tags and haven't been repainted in months. Similarly the cream fences are painted with olive green, cream and tags. We were so pleased when they built the bike path, thinking that it would add to the value of our house and look much nicer. In fact it looks much uglier all the time and you see very few bicycle riders, although a lot of walkers use it.
    31-5-2015: Getting worse and worse but a week ago someone sprayed over all the graffiti and olive green paint with cream paint. It looks bad but not as bad as the graffiti, and perhaps someone who had a cream fence originally was making their point.
    3-4-2015: It lasted exactly one week and by now is 10 times worse with a multitude of ugly tags in many colours. Morons-tag your own houses if you think it is so wonderful.
    16-3-2015:Whoops, just went out to take a photo to illustrate my point and the graffiti has been neatly covered again-the olive green paint even matches the previous lot. Well done whoever. Let's see how long this lasts.
    15-3-2015: The new bike path is continually being hit by taggers. Thousands of dollars of new fencing has been defaced. After months of complaints to the council and to the railways, all the graffiti was finally covered with olive green paint, even that on the cream fences. After about 2 nights it was back-the same tag over and over again, and it's been there for weeks. It is a well known fact that the only way to beat graffiti is to remove it at once. I offered to do my bit if they would supply some paint, but haven't ever heard back and it is in an awkward place for which I would need consent.

    SPEED HUMPS AND SLOW POINTS
    Had a letter published in 'The Advertiser' of 7-11-2020 about speed humps around the Unley Council. I couldn't believe what they have done to Weller St, Goodwood, when I drove along there, recently. I'm not sure what the agenda is in this area. Apparently people are absolutely paranoid about 'rat runners' because you are not even allowed to turn down this street towards the city in the morning rush hour, the speed limit is 40 km/h, and yet they have built multiple slow points down most of the street such that you have to go into one very narrow lane in the middle of the street to get through. I know Weller St well as I used to use it morning and night when I dropped off my children at Goodwood Primary School, and then travelled on to Unley High where I taught. I lived in the area, had children at school in the area and worked in the area so I was not using the street to cheat traffic, but just going about my business to get from one place to the other conveniently. The street was never busy at that time.
    The same thing happened to Byron Rd, Black Forest about 15 years ago. That is quite a big street between East Avenue and South Rd and could potentially be a speedway, but because the road is blocked by the train line at East Avenue to all but left turning cars from East Ave, there had hardly ever been a problem with speeding cars, especially given the current 40km/h speed limit. Yes, people will occasionally exceed the limits and a couple of humps may have been needed, but instead they installed slow points repeatedly along the way. As I say in my letter, it is a battle every day to decide who goes first, and whether you can make it before the car coming in the opposite direction gets to the single lane. It drives me crazy that they would do this to a perfectly fine, quiet suburban road. Who lives or lived there that this expensive, ugly, noisy ruination was thought to be necessary? There are a least 64 signs along the street to warn of the slow points, and at the slow points. Parking is enormously reduced including in front of a very popular children's playground. Traffic along East Avenue has become huge and just announced plans to build overpasses and tunnels starting right in this area on South Road, suggest that traffic problems in the area are going to be chaotic for years to come. No doubt more and more cutlet houses and townhouses will be built in the area too, due to the state government's insane rush to fill up every block of land to the maximum, and this will exacerbate parking problem even more. Sensible, long-term, thoughtful planning, with an overview of whole areas, not just individual streets and their occupants, should be what happens.


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