I remember saying "wait, THE Mal Colston?" when I found this out

Anne Twomey seems to be doing more research than is warranted just for some YouTube videos so I am *really* hoping she plans to write something formally

When I moved to Melbourne aged 19, I was so confused that trams didn't run in multiple or have trailers. I'd spent so long with tram history books seeing such things that I assumed everyone did it!

Riding a Z3 through Royal Park standing by an open window, the sun streaming down, the breeze in my hair, something delightful in my earbuds... that's as good a public transport experience as you're getting

I completely and unironically agree with this and I will be so sad when the last Z3s go to the great tram barn in the sky

Have you read George Hilton's The Cable Car in America? He makes the point (affectionately) that cable trams had inexhaustible problems, not least their dislike of curves, and were doomed the moment electric was viable—but enjoyed a sensational 1880s heyday

...modes of progress, neither too fast nor too slow, no horrible noises—except the occasional clanging of the gripman’s bell—no smells of petrol or crude oil! But the men with the pneumatic drills ripped up the old tracks, the clashing electric juggernauts and the grinding 'buses took their place"

Second, the writer Clive Turnbull penned a great take on riding cable trams (The Melbourne Book, 1948, p.27): "What could be more enchanting... than to ride on the front seat of a cable tram to St. Kilda through the balmy summer night—the cable tram, which was surely the most satisfactory of all...

Actually this just reminded me how sad it is Tasmania doesn't have an electorate named after their first premier: William Champ

"Will the Member for Champ please resume his seat, champ"

Grim Reaper please bide your time until at least a day after he has exhausted his final appeals and spent a restless night stewing on it

I have a couple of random printed parliamentary reports from the 1980s that I literally picked up from a "FREE - please take" box outside a secondhand bookshop in Tirau

I will also accept this outcome: bsky.app/profile/swea...

More's the pity our first prime minister didn't have some fine Germanic last name like Koch or Fuchs. It would be very hard to say "well no we can't name an electorate after the inaugural PM because teehee"

I'd say they're now def more dysfunctional than WA and the Cth oppositions, probably worse than SA despite the SA Libs heading for a wipeout in March, but not yet as hopeless as the oppositions in Vic or Tas (Vic Libs finding new and unusual ways to lose; Tas Labor actively choosing not to govern)

Scrutineers would have a hell of a time working out if people scribbling a cock and balls on their ballot is an informal vote or meant to be 1 for the Ed unity ticket

He then later turned that volume of poetry into an album of the same name, setting the poems to music!

(I both love and hate that I know all this)

Would you believe he recorded *eight* albums during the 1970s and had at least a couple of singles that charted (albeit modestly)