Sunday, December 5, 2010

A few more for the crusher

A short stroll around the suburb last week unearthed a handful of abandoned vehicles. I don't go for a walk looking for these things - I go for a walk to stretch my legs. I just have an eye for spotting things that look out of place - like rusting, spider web covered out of rego abandoned vehicles.

The first was a courier van that hasn't done any deliveries for 18 months - the rego expired in Feb 2009.


If I can find the rego sticker (not all abandoned cars have one visible), I photograph it and email it to Council, along with a photo of the vehicle and the street address where I found it. Council can only remove vehicles if the rego has expired, so they know you're not wasting their time if you send them evidence that the rego expired long ago. They don't want to have to do a pile of paperwork, only to find that the vehicle is still registered. (Sometimes it is registered, but the owner hasn't bothered to attach the new rego sticker - you can cop a $75 fine for forgetting to do that).


I found two abandoned cars on opposite sides of the street. The rego of one expired almost 12 months ago, and the other one about 6 months ago.



I guess this car was crashed into something, and the owner couldn't be bothered fixing it - so they just abandoned it in the street - leaving it to the ratepayer to pay for its removal. Some people have no class at all.


Art - cabinets and laneways

I spotted these in a laneway in the city last week - it's a series of 5 babushka dolls that have been glued to the wall.


The lower part of each doll is a montage of photos of large dolls that someone has lugged around Sydney and photographed in iconic locations. I'm assuming this is guerrilla art of some sort - it makes a lovely change from the tags that are sometimes scrawled along these walls.


Canada Bay Council has engaged an artist to beautify a number of RTA traffic light cabinets around the Drummoyne area. Personally, I think the cabinets in Leichhardt are better - but that's just my personal taste. This is certainly much better than the graffiti tags that were there previously.


I just hope that Council views this as a success, and rolls it out across the rest of the Canada Bay area.

More of these dolls - anyone for a pie floater?