Sights from the train

Date: 10 January 2006 09:38:40

Another good day at the course: today we learnt about managing access to resources connected to the server as well as how to organise user groups and other technical collections I'll have to go back to my book to recall the name of. As someone with very little network experience, it feels like an overload of information at times, but I am learning a great deal and have a clearer idea how networks function -- at a basic level at least.

I do like train travel: just not during peak hours. If I'm overseas I always like to catch a train / tram / bus somewhere, as you can stare out the window and watch everything go by. On my last trip to Germany, back in 2003, I travelled between cities and towns by train and greatly enjoyed seeing the countryside from the carriage: though at times it did whoosh by rather quickly -- some German trains are quite fast. But whether I was zooming along at up to 300km/hr on the ICE, or travelling at a more leisurely pace on a branch line on a StadtExpress, it was a very interesting trip. One thing I noticed is that in almost all cases, as you passed small villages or approached towns, a church steeple was the tallest thing in the town. Constantly. And it was very enjoyable to travel overnight from Dresden to Munich in my Schlafwagen. Eating breakfast by the window on a cool morning as the towns flash past is a wonderful way to wake-up.

Travelling in one's own city isn't always as exciting, but there are a few interesting things I've noticed from the train as I travelled to the city this week.

The houses in the inner-city, at least those close to the railway line, are very different from those in the suburbs. Reflecting the working-class heritage and the style of the times, most are terraces (PDF) with some federation-style (PDF) houses. Many of these, especially the terraces, appear to have been recently renovated, or at least given a nice coat of paint.

In Summer Hill, houses and such give way all of a sudden to a huge flour mill. It really is a site to see so close to the city. According to Wikipedia, it was built around 1922, with the silos added from the 1950s onwards.

Looking to the left as you arrive at Macdonaldtown railway station, there's a painting on the side of a house you may not expect. I remember seeing it when I was younger and not understand it; when I went to uni and saw it, I thought I'd better work out what is was. It was a painting of John Carlos and Tommy Smith's raising their black-gloved fists as a symbol of Black Power after coming first and third in the 200 metres at the 1968. They were banned from the Olympic Games for life.

In the city, at Central railway station, is the old Mortuary Station, which is now a restaurant I believe. Between 1868 and 1948 funeral trains travelled between it and Rookwood Necropolis -- the largest multicultural necropolis in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1957, the gothic sandstone railway station at Rookwood was moved to Canberra, where it was transformed into All Saints' Anglican Church, Ainslie. [Which I visited last year.]

And, finally, there are a number of old -- for Sydney at least -- churches, especially around Summer Hill, Lewisham and Newtown that stand high and whose spires or edifices you can see as you pass. I'll have to try and visit them one day -- I've visited St Thomas Becket at Lewisham, and the adjoining Maternal Heart of Mary Latin Mass parish. It's time I visited some more.