Glebe

If Jubilee Park light rail station is at the back end of Glebe then the station that at least notionally services the suburb itself can best be described as being at the even backer end of Glebe.  Glebe sprawls and drapes over a low rise and down to Blackwattle Bay.  The busy centre of the suburb is on Glebe Point Road which runs along the rise.  Back down at sea level Glebe light rail station clings to the edge of the mainland looking wistfully up at the collection of flats, heritage buildings shops and houses which form the bulk of the suburb.

Glebe light rail station did once have a particular use for me.  It happened to be about two minutes walk from the home of friends of mine who lived in Glebe.  Recently, however, they moved across town without telling me.  This makes perfect sense because if friends and relatives are going to turn up on your doorstep anyway there seems to be little point in moving.  What it does mean though is that I was going to have to find something else of interest if I wanted this blog entry to be more than two paragraphs long.

With my options wide open I hopped off the light rail, went down some stairs and halted just before I walked out into traffic.  Across the rather busy road was the Glebe foreshore and beyond that Blackwattle Bay itself.  Back in my long distant and sadly not misspent enough youth I once came to a gaming convention at a school that was occupying a rather choice piece of bay side land here.  Time has moved on and the site of the school is now occupied by what announces itself as a secondary college whatever that is.  In case the prospect of harbourside education didn't fill you with excitement a sign pointed the way to Glebe rowing club.  It is a measure of my desperation that I decided that was a good enough destination and I set off eager to see people clambering into long narrow boats and dipping oars into what, with a certain generosity of spirit, I shall designate as water.

Sadly there were no boats in the water when I turned up at the rowing club although there was one up on the wharf getting a rub down and a bag of hay before being put back into the shed.  However a sign invited me to enjoy the Glebe foreshore and a wooden walkway ran along side the salty liquid to facilitate said enjoyment.  Enjoy it I did.  The day was warm, I hadn't dressed inappropriately for once and despite my earlier snarky comment the water was clear enough to see the cans and chip packets resting on the bottom.  I eagerly scanned the water as I strolled along and was rewarded with the sight of a fish.  Then another and another.  There was actually quite a bunch of fish perhaps not quite a school of fish but definitely a secondary college of fish.  Also if I walked along looking at the water I didn't have to look up and see the cement works which stood as a defiant rock against the tide of gentrification sweeping what used to be quite a grotty area.  Having enjoyed my waterside stroll and congratulated the fish on their sheer survivability I recrossed the road and plunged into the inhabited part of Glebe.

One of the genuine pleasures I've had in travelling to these light rail stations has been finding small patches of quiet peace literally within shouting distance of busy roads and everything that accompanies a major city.  I walked along a narrow street with a sandstone cliff on one side and a line of trees on the other.  It was cool, it was quiet, you could hear birdsong.  It didn't really matter that the "cliff" had been cut into the sandstone to make the road and there was a house about twenty feet above my head or that the trees lined the light rail line which meant about ten feet of greenery at best.  Quietness and solitude is best enjoyed when its voluntary.  The thought of living somewhere genuinely quiet and solitary fills me with horror but peace, quiet and leafy green in the immediate proximity of concrete and public transport delights me.

Speaking of public transport I eschewed the light rail and climbed the hill to Glebe Point Road to catch a bus home.  I had just missed the bus I wanted but fortunately the traffic was so heavy that I caught up with it a couple of stops further along.  That's my idea of escaping to the country.