Jubilee Park

It took me a while to get around to this one for various illness and laziness related reasons but finally I managed to get along to the next station on what is, for the moment, Sydney's only light rail line.  The trip from Rozelle Bay takes us past what used to be parks but now seem to be construction sites for various road works.  Bare earth with clumps of trees tied up in orange tape (to prevent them straying at night) predominates on the harbour side until we roll over a brick viaduct to reach Jubilee Park.  The viaduct itself is apparently of great heritage significance and the subject of much adulation among people who admire such things.  I'm not sure why, humans have been putting one brick on top of another since before Roman times although admittedly the Romans didn't run a railway along the top.

Jubilee Park is at the back end of Glebe and provides a handy border between the houses and apartment blocks of Glebe and the Parramatta River.  Hint, if your feet are getting wet you've strayed too far.  The park provides a pleasant expanse where people can drag their children when they're too young to have iPhones and set up stalls to sell things to each other.  There's also a cricket pitch right next to the station so you can watch all of the "action" without leaving the platform.  A match was in progress when I arrived and I spent a few enjoyable minutes watching the game but I couldn't help thinking there was something missing.  After some reflection I realised that I normally watch cricket on television.  For me I'm afraid the game isn't the same without a pair of overpaid halfwits spouting banalities for my amusement.

Since Jubilee Park was there and so was I walking through it was, if not a good idea, at least the one that required the least mental effort.  Leaving the commentary free cricket behind I ploughed ahead eschewing organised sport for disorganised sport as various people kicked a ball roughly in each other's direction.  Further ahead there was simple disorganisation as groups of people were setting up stalls, presumably to sell things to each other.  I didn't stop to find out but turned my back on the green of the park and headed inland towards the asphalt and concrete of the city.

I headed inland for about fifty metres until I found a street that would take me back to the light rail station.  I was struggling to think of something to do, when I remembered a conversation held some weeks back with a work colleague who had pointed out that the Tramsheds were in that general area.  The Tramsheds were, well, tramsheds.  Or at least they had been tramsheds back in the days when Sydney had had trams.  Sydney doesn't have trams now it has light rail instead.  Eleven whole kilometres of it stretching from Central to Dulwich Hill.  Some three billion dollars later and its second light rail line is apparently almost ready to go.  What this means is that the tramsheds were redundant.  For years they sat derelict until five years ago they were redeveloped although first the redevelopers had to chase out a bunch of trams that had been left inside and forgotten.

Once the mechanical vermin had been disposed of and the more offensive of the graffiti cleaned up the place was subjected to an "adaptive reuse" which is a flatulent way of saying "renovation".  The place was adaptively reused in a sympathetic and harmonious way whatever that means.  I think it means the place still looks largely like a tramshed.  In case you had any doubt it has the word "Tramsheds" in big letters at the entrance.

So what was this decaying piece of Sydney's transport heritage adaptively reused as?  Basically its a food court and shopping mall.  Here you can dine at very expensive versions of the sort of places you grab your lunch from if (like me) you work in the city and do food shopping for up market equivalents of stuff you can get from your local supermarket.  It was the "wild caught, sustainably sourced" fish that got me.  How do you sustainably source a fish?  Only kill it a bit?  The chunks of fish I saw were definitely not going to be frolicking in the oceans again any time soon.  Possibly because I had eaten before setting out on my journey I saw no reason to avail myself of the only service the Tramsheds seems to offer so I left and caught the light rail into the city on a futile birthday present search.