Secrets of a Sydney past

Growing up, discovering and uncovering the forgotten

We do try to cover our costs by selling mugs, teeshirts, hats, bags, stickers and images...
addicted2wheels Large Mug
The A2W large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
The GTVeloce mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
OODB large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
The Tipo116 large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
Yet another mug!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

 

Shooting through like a Bondi Tram...

My old bike racing club (yes, I have subsequently joined a new one, up on the Central Coast) is based at Heffron Park, Maroubra, and has (with the essential help of the local council) linked together old sections of concrete road with new sections of tar. The completed loop is 2.1km long and quite a testing criterium track. But why were those concrete roads there in the first place? Well Heffron Park (named after a NSW State Premier) was an Army base, like the Addison Road Community Centre in inner-west Marrickville was once an Army base, including a Light Horse stables (amongst many other possible examples, the Addison Road base is famous for some of the "save our sons" demos during the Vietnam War). It's recycling in action, isn't it? Anyway, when the bike club put in some toilets in the clubhouse they had to cut the concrete - and the stories about tanks in Heffron Park suddenly made sense. That concrete was thick.


But not as thick as the successive NSW State governments that oversaw the dismantling of the tramway system, though. (OK, another cheap shot - hindsight is a wonderful thing.) As I mentioned yesterday, some parts of the network remain and are worth re-visiting, if only for the memories. So what features of the inner-west and eastern suburban tramway system can still be discerned?

Well Bondi Beach is a prime example. The trams that famously "shot through" to Bondi terminated at North Bondi where Military Road meets Campbell Parade (AKA 'Scarborough Crescent'). The terminus can still be clearly seen, as can much of the route along Campbell Pde, although cars and buses have tended to take over the trampath for parking. Interestingly, bicycle races were also held on the Campbell Parade "hot-dog", before they too were driven out by the car traffic, firstly to road races along semi-deserted Bunnerong Road and finally into the fully-enclosed Heffron Park.

The tram route to Bondi is well documented with the most interesting deviation from the obvious being where the track took a graceful curve to the right (from Bondi Rd, heading down the hill) into Denham Street, then along Fletcher and onto reserved track just past Dudley Street. (The reserved track later became Rowland Ave.) The track crossed under Wilga Street in a cutting that continued on to also pass under Bondi Road, rejoining the main drag (southern end of Campbell Parade) on the other side of Bondi Road (at the Francis Street intersection). It's hard to imagine now, but yes there was a cutting and 2 overbridges involved in keeping the track at the desired gradient, all subsequently filled in. I witnessed the start of the filling-in in the mid 1970s.

Labels: , ,


Sunday, February 3, 2008

 

The tram to Bondi

Up until 1961 there was an extensive tramway network in Sydney, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and 2nd only to London amongst Commonwealth countries. London changed to buses and Sydney sadly followed. Here are some shots of the cuttings through which the trams made their way down to Bondi beach. These shots were taken in the mid-1970s, just before developers moved in and robbed Sydney of dedicated tramway land.

Labels: ,


blog comments powered by Disqus

Archives

September 2007   October 2007   February 2008   May 2008   June 2008   July 2008   September 2008   November 2008   January 2009   March 2009   April 2009   May 2009   August 2009   September 2009   October 2009   December 2009   January 2010   March 2010  

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]






www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from gtveloce. Make your own badge here.

Society Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory


We do try to cover our costs by selling mugs, teeshirts, hats, bags, stickers and images...
addicted2wheels Large Mug
The A2W large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
The GTVeloce mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
OODB large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
The Tipo116 large mug!
gtveloce Large Mug
Yet another mug!





Cars, bikes and com-munities Alfa Romeos and cars in general Fort Street Class of 75 Reunion Varied Image Gallery Aviation The Spiel - futurism and business Bikes!



ss_blog_claim=a0387bd7920c58aa342340cba85a8860

These posts represent my opinions only and may have little or no association with the facts as you see them. Look elsewhere, think, make up your own minds. If I quote someone else I attribute. If I recommend a web site it's because I use it myself. If an advert appears it's because I affiliate with Google and others similar in nature and usually means nothing more than that... the Internet is a wild and untamed place folks, so please tread warily. My opinions are just that and do not constitute advice or legal opinion of any sort.
All original material is copyright 2008, 2009, 2010 by myself, too, in accord with the Creative Commons licence (see below).



QuickLinks: Addicted2Wheels Autoexpo 2000 GTVeloce Automotive Gallery GTVeloce.com GTVeloce Image Library Fort Street High School Class of 75 All purpose Chatroom Userplane Chat Fortian Image Gallery 1975 Flora Gallery Miscellaneous Image Gallery Bike Racing Gallery Airliner Gallery Airline Postcard Gallery Gerry's Gallery GTVeloce rave on Alfa Romeos Alfa Gallery Automotive How-to Index Staying Alive Handling 101 Handling 102 Handling 103 Tyrepressures Camber Toe Caster Polar Moment Roll Oversteer Understeer Weight transfer Coil springs Wheels and Tyres Pitch Heel and Toe Double Declutch Offset Rollbars BMEP calculator Cornering load calculator GTVeloce Blog Offline Blog Out Out Damned Blog Addicted2Wheels Blog The Spiel on business MBA Resources HR Resources KM Reframed Bike Racing forum KlausenRussell Com-munity Chain Chatter Unofficial RBCC info Official RBCC info Unofficial CCCC info Official CCCC info Rob's Guide to Road, Crit and Track Racing Rob's Guide, part 2 Track race tips Sydney's Velodromes What do those lines mean? Automobile links Mustknow links Philosophy links Music Links Images of the Russell, Matthews, O'Brien and Brown families in Australia Rob's Amateur Art Gallery The GTVeloce GiftShop The GTVeloce Shopfront Rob Russell's images at Image Tank


Creative Commons License