4 April 2021

We started a long drive nice and early this morning, heading northwards to look at some fish. And other things. But mainly fish. And turtles.

There are two roads we could choose from for this journey. There’s the old road we have driven many times before, meandering through outlying suburbs, small towns and farmland before you reach the highway heading north, where you join up with every truck in the state.

Or there’s the newer road that connects nicely with the end of the freeway, taking you on a scenic route along the coast.

But we picked up a passenger closer to the old road, so that’s the route we chose.

Only to discover that, in the ten years or so since we travelled this way last, they have made changes. A LOT of changes. The main roads that would meander through roads and farms and towns has been replaced with a brand spanking new multi lane highway, with flyovers and so forth. We didn’t see a traffic light or intersection for ages, and we suddenly found ourselves well advanced along the main highway heading north.

The GPS on our car had no idea where we were, and showed us merrily driving in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately in our car we have a middle/upper aged male who acts as the GPS without needing to engage the electronic model provided in the vehicle. Although I did happen to wonder about the convoluted path it would have tried to send us, had we asked the car for directions.

Possibly through outlying suburbs, farms and little towns.

It got me thinking about how growth happens. There is now this beautiful road leading to areas where there is no housing, no schools, supermarkets or coffee shops.

But the road to development is set up ready to go. It’s a beautiful road, shortens the driving time back to the main metropolitan area, and there appears to be a rail line soon heading that way too.

Not that long ago we got into conversation with someone who had bought a very large amount of land on the hill above a town in the south of our state. This large chunk of land (around 30 hectares from memory) doesn’t have ready road access and is essentially farmland, but this person is thinking to the future, when roads will eventually (hopefully) create access to all this land he now owns, and he will be sitting on a goldmine that he will sell off for housing. Or coffee shops.

Two very different methods of creating new housing developments. But only one of these methods shaved nearly half an hour off our journey this morning 🙂

Stay tuned in the coming days for pictures of fish.