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  • Things to be grateful for

    It’s the beginning of a new year, and sometimes I think that us gunzels complain about things just a little too much. Often these are perfectly valid and being introspective is a…

    16 January, 2020

  • 2019 in photos

    Another year, another few thousand photos uploaded to Flickr. Here’s a small selection of some from 2019. I rode my bike up through Woodlands Park and the aircraft observation area north of…

    31 December, 2019

  • Tram roundabouts of Melbourne

    With 85 percent of Melbourne’s tram network mixed with general traffic, it is inevitable that they will have to pass through some interesting intersections. In Melbourne, there are 19 roundabouts that have…

    19 December, 2019

  • Are more people living in apartments now than in 1954?

    65 years ago the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) released the Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme. This formed the foundations for our current planning system. Some aspects, like car parking requirements,…

    28 November, 2019

  • Station patronage in Melbourne for 2005-2019

    While accountants may be excited by the end of a financial year, gunzels get excited for another reason – new station patronage data! Using the same method as last year, I have…

    14 November, 2019

  • Crossing the Rubicon

    Last week I crossed the Rubicon River on a hike in north-central Victoria. Unlike Julies Caesar, doing so didn’t start a war. The main reason for this trip was to have a…

    17 October, 2019

  • What happened to the closed schools of the 1990s? Part 2

    Read Part 1 here. Keysborough Primary School The original school in this area was opened in 1869 and moved to this cosy country school building in 1874. Not to be confused with…

    4 October, 2019

  • The shopping strips of Reservoir

    Just before the prominence of private cars engrained itself into Melbourne’s urban planning after the Second World War, Reservoir went through a major housing expansion. Although there was some European settlement in…

    19 September, 2019

  • Victoria’s rocket playgrounds

    Googie architecture (1950s, 60s and 70s) has not been preserved as well as other periods in Melbourne and Victoria. Many of the examples of this brief but fascinating time in design have…

    5 September, 2019

  • Day trip to Lake Iseo

    Note: this post was written in August 2017 during my trip to Europe. My three days spent in the north of Italy were nowhere near enough. But I did spend my second…

    22 August, 2019