WestConnex ruins everything...

Comrades,

It was a glorious autumn picture postcard Easter Saturday afternoon in the Emerald City and found myself wandering about in Sydney Park, that magnificent 103 acre oasis of green rolling hills, trees, wildlife, wetlands, and the heritage-listed old brick kiln chimneys just over the way from St Peters and Newtown and only 3.3km from the CBD.
It was beautiful...full of folk in the sunshine enjoying themselves hugely, from Champagne drinking BBQ's through to drug-fuelled rave parties complete with duf-duf music, thousands of children on scooters and bicycles, loose footballs everywhere, great flocks of birds shitting all over the shop and millions of dogs [where do they all come from?], all happily getting along as their keepers [including me] completely ignored council by-laws regulating that it was a dog on-leash area.
Running wild and free, they were.
Inspected the massive engineering works - which have to be seen to be believed - slicing a nice chunk out of the eastern side of the park for WestConnex...that multi-billion dollar Tory 'vote-winning' project to build a new heavily-tolled "Road to Nowhere", where they are currently doing a cut-and-cover for the ins and outs to the "spaghetti junction" connecting to the duplication of the M5 East motorway tunnel, currently the second longest road tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere.
The whole thing is beyond comprehension.
And boy, aren't the locals antsy about it.
There were hand-written protest signs everywhere, and a small encampment of itinerant's pup tents along the new boundary of the park and the road works, keeping an eye on things 24/7.
No-one argues that the whole stinking schemozzle of an over-budget over-time mess is other than an appalling waste of long-suffering taxpayer's time and money - they'll be chaining themselves to the earthmovers soon enough.
You've gotta love a touch of civil disobedience - and while one of my favourite banners read "A Fair Go For Trees", others are taking it very personally:

(originally published 18-04-17)