Underworld

Two weeks ago, I wrote a short piece about the area under two side-by-side railway bridges in Concord.  There is a boat ramp next to the bridges, and a small car park for boat trailers and cars under the bridges themselves, but it appears to be a rarely visited spot.  The odd fisherman launches his boat from here, and that's it.

The lack of human traffic has allowed it to become a forgotten land - the land only visited by those seeking to illegally dump rubbish, or to vandalise every available surface.  The road is pot holed and unmaintained, the weeds are waist high and the place literally stinks.  Piles of uncollected rubbish are rotting in the shade of  the bridges, and no one appears to care.

I know I publish a lot of stuff about graffiti, and although there is a lot of it under these bridges, in my opinion, it is incidental.  The rubbish and the weeds and the badly paved road have not resulted from graffiti being sprayed there - the graffiti has been sprayed there because the area is so manifestly unloved and not cared for.  Whichever authority is responsible for this location, whether it be the council, the RTA, RailCorp or the Waterways - or all of them - they've all forgotten about it.  

It is a black hole in their maintenance and inspection programs.  A non-location.  

A request has been lodged with Council to clean it up.  It's going to be more than just scrubbing off a bit of graffiti - a truckload of putrid rubbish needs to be picked up, the weeds need cutting and/or spraying and running a grader over the car park would improve it markedly.  

I'm not going to bang on about graffiti here, because it is the least of the problems at this site.  No one would be game to stand around too long to be offended by the graffiti because of the smell.  

I'm hoping that a simple request to Council will put this site back on their radar, and they won't allow it to degenerate this badly again.