Tour of the West Gate Tunnel Project

One of the perks of working at Transurban is that you can sign up for tours of our major construction projects — which is how I found myself on a tour of the West Gate Tunnel Project last week :)

Wearing boots, a hard hat, and high visibility vest while touring the West Gate Tunnel Project northern portal (which is across the street from Yarraville Gardens).

I love the West Gate Tunnel Project because, as someone who lives in Melbourne’s west, I know first hand how much of a pain it can be to drive into the city.

Once complete, this new toll road will make it much easier for folks coming from the west — ie the Western Ring Road (M80) or the West Gate Freeway (M1) — to get into the western side of Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD).

Right now, if you’re driving into the city from the west, you have two options: (a) go through Footscray by taking Geelong/Williamstown road and then Dynon/Footscray road or (b) take the West Gate Bridge and get to the south of the CBD.

The West Gate Tunnel will give us a third option, albeit a tolled one: (c) take the tunnel under Yarraville and the Maribyrnong River, followed by the elevated roadway above Footscray Road. Then connect to Footscray Road, Dynon Road (near North Melbourne railway station), or Wurundjeri Way to get into the city; or take the on-ramp to CityLink and go north.

Map from WGTP project website.

Sadly, this project is still three years away from completion so there’s nothing to do but wait.

On the up-side: this means I’ll get to go on more project construction tours over the coming years :)

Stage door at Festival Hall

I got to walk through West Melbourne early this morning while on my way to volunteer at the Run for the Kids fun run. There was an issue with the trains so I had to get off one stop before I wanted to and walk the rest of the way. I didn’t mind too much because the walk was nice and I got to take this photo of the stage door at Festival Hall (formerly a stadium, now a heritage listed concert and sporting venue).

Stage door at Festival Hall in West Melbourne

Hi, Dad!

Run for the Kids 2019

Run for the Kids is an annual community fun run in Melbourne that raises funds for the the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Good Friday Appeal.

What’s particularly cool about this event is that you get to run over the Bolte Bridge, one of Melbourne’s two iconic road bridges (the other being the West Gate Bridge). In fact, if you look closely at this photo of the Bolte, you can actually see people running across the top!

Bolte Bridge as seen from Docklands, Melbourne during Run for the Kids 2019

Transurban has been a principal sponsor of this event since 2006. And, every year, hundreds of my colleagues either volunteer their time as organisers and/or participate in the run with their families.

Given I’m a digital and social media person, my contribution for the 2019 run was to post content to Transurban’s social media channels and to moderate the tweets and Instagram posts that were going to be displayed on large digital screens around the event space. Both kept me busy and both were lots of fun.

It was particularly nice to see people post a photo using the event hashtag and then take a selfie of themselves in front of the big screen when their original post came up in the display rotation :)

Of course this meant that I got to spend most of the event in a marquee bent over my laptop.

Selfie in a marquee at Run for the Kids 2019

Not that I minded, of course. I wanted to contribute in any way that I could. Besides, I’m not a runner so it’s not like I was going to participate anyway!

All in all, I had a really fun day and the event was hugely successful too — which, of course, is the important thing.

Judith Lucy is fantastic

Last night Nadia and I went to watch Judith Lucy’s latest show at the 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. If you’re into an honest, brutal, hilarious, mature, and insightful comedy about love, relationships, and society, then you should go watch it as well. Judith is fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.

Waiting for Judith Lucy to come and perform her fantastic ‘Judith Lucy vs Men’ show.