Well, it is not really a town. It is a called the Central Coast (just north of Sydney) where I live. The SMH has been running stories on the Central Coast all this week highlighting the problems this area faces as its population rapidly expands.
The problems faced by the Central Coast are a good example of what happens when expansion is not met with proper planning. As pointed out in this article, commuting is a major problem with the F3 between Gosford and Sydney struggling to cope and the rail network regularly running into trouble. Like this morning for example. Lucky my start time is very flexible. Also, like many who do the commute to Sydney, I’m armed with a Blackberry and a laptop. A mobile office if you will (though I detest people using mobiles on trains but that is another issue).
Regardless of the merits of using public transport, I can’t see how people drive to the CBD everyday from the Coast. Last time I did I came home with a massive headache and stressed from dealing with the traffic. The CBD to Hornsby is a painful crawl during peak hour. The trip of 13km takes at least twice as long as the 40 odd km from Hornsby to Gosford.
Another problem is the lack of adequate health services. Finding a GP is like winning the lottery. A combination of an aging population and the influx of young families fleeing the high mortages of Sydney had placed intense demand on such services.
And of course, you can’t have a story about the problems of urban sprawl with tales of youf gone wild!. That is not to dismiss the problems of youth. It is just such an easy target. Therefore I have this ambivalence about the Herald’s coverage.
I am glad that the problems of urban expansion are getting a sympathetic hearing. However, the problem is that it creates a distorted picture of life on the Coast. It is more than bored, disaffected teenagers harassing oldies who can’t find a doctor because the trains don’t run on time.
I love living on the Coast. Yes the commute is a bugger but the simple pleasure of seeing the glory of the Hawkesbury framed by the morning is still a lovely sight. Of course being close to the water one would be remiss not to use. Last Sunday the Father-in-law and I were on Brisbane Waters by 6:00am. A glorious winter’s morning on which to match wits with the crafty wiles of the bream. And then there are the beaches just a few minutes from our door. Even on a hot summer’s day, if you know where to go, you can avoid the crowds.
Leaving nature, the pleasures of urban life can be easily found. Great restaurants abound on the Coast and not just centered around tourist areas like Terrigal. Your locals will know some great haunts with friendly service. And the Coast still retains the some of the charm of country New South Wales. It is a place where the bus driver will greet you with a friendly word and people will say thanks as they alight from the bus at journey’s end. And the local merchants will know who you are with a smile.
There is a great feeling that those that live on the coast get on the Friday evening commute. It happens when the train crosses the Hawkesbury. An almost symbolic act of leaving the smoke behind that makes you feel you are on a holiday weekend.
Yes, the Central Coast has some issues that need to be addressed but life ain’t bad up here.
Is that title a Go-Betweens reference, Shaun? If not, why not?
Great post. Sometimes you’ve just got to remind yourself and others that those kinds of stories only ever tell a bit about the place you live your life. It’s like when they play the assault figures for the inner areas of Sydney, or they talk about the problems on the Block. I always think that, yes, those are worrying problems, but Redfern, Chippendale and Surry Hills are still a part of my life.
Back when we lived in Sydney, I used to catch a train at Gordon or Pymble to get to work in the CBD. Every now and again, you’d get on a train from the central coast to be greeted with carriages full of sleeping people. It was unsettling, like a train of the dead.
Shaun of the dead!
What a strange space to enter, David, given that trains are already such complex knots of spatial practice.
Lol, Christine.
And you have a surprisingly very good football team there!
Heh. I resemble that remark Christine!
Though this morning I stayed awake which is a little unusual. But yes, there is usually a deathly silence during the morning commutes. Sometimes broken by an over loud iPod or the obvious mobile.
And yes, an obvious Go Between reference.
Worked in Sydney for a year. Hated it. I had a 10 minute commute on a bus and I hated it (a 10 minute commnute that sometimes stretched to 40 minutes, thanks to the joys of Glebe Point Road).
I worked with someone who commuted every day from the Blue Mountains. Two hours, each way. Others came in from the northern beaches, by car, across the Bridge. Travel time: highly variable, but never less than 90 minutes. I didn’t know anyone coming in from the Central Coast, but I’m sure they were around somewhere. Looking like zombies.
Mad, all of them. Other than the cashed-up northern beaches folks (executive scum) their whole reason for writing off four hours or more a day in commuting was that they liked the lifestyle where they lived. Really? And when were they there to enjoy it? When were they awake enough to enjoy it?
That rant aside, Shaun is absolutely right in saying that many of the problems facing the Central Coast are down to poor planning and a complete lack of foresight. Which is the NSW Government all over.
It’s got to the point where people move there not just to escape the high mortgages of Sydney but the high rents - housing has moved to another notch of impossibility for friends of ours who moved to Gosford this year. They have two small kids and the dad now gets up at 4.30am to commute to a job in central Sydney, gets home about 6.30pm and has to be in bed by 9pm at latest - not much time for seeing the baby. I think they prefer it though - much bigger house with nice outlook.
I know other people who thought they were moving from Melbourne to Sydney but went straight to the central coast when they looked at house prices.
The Central Coast is the divorce capital of Australia. People move there when they are after a change of scene from western Sydney but can’t afford/don’t want to go elsewhere in Sydney. The commute separates breadwinners from family life, and those close-by beaches are not visited as often as was initially thought. The few jobs that exist up there are mainly in retail, and middle-aged women will get those jobs ahead of the yoof every time because they are more reliable.
When the main industry on the Coast was orcharding, it was Country Party territory. The Country Party grandees did what they’ve done in all coastal communities - cash in, build lotsa cheap housing, then act all hurt when people move in and vote Labor.
A dormitory suburb does not take itself seriously as a community. It is hard to organise and easily swayed. There are 4-6 State seats on the Central Coast (depends if you count Lake Macquarie, which I regard as part of the Hunter) and Labor hold them all.
Neville Wran was the first pollie to take the Coast seriously. Commuting was vital to him winning Gosford and Blue Mountains in 1976, which set him up for a decade in office. The capital works on weekends improving the rail line have been underway for 20 years, but they are the first major works on that line - which is only a metre or two above the water line for much of it - since the 1920s. The Libs are too scared to announce major capital works on the line, but if they did they’d win two seats at least.
The Coast has an above-normal One Nation vote because the people who left western Sydney felt alienated by the increasing presence of new migrants, and vacated their homes to them.
I grew up in Kincumber when it was largely bush, but fled.
I commuted to the CBD from Lisarow for a couple of years in the 80s. It had its compensations - Shaun’s description of the sun rising above the Hawkesbury and of the Friday evening parties on the train brought back pleasant memories - but I moved to Canberra because I was kissing my small son bye bye in the morning while he was still asleep and he’d be asleep again by the time I got home. That’s no way to live.
I made a bit of a killing on the real estate, but.
While not a part of the current SMH series on the central coast, a piece on the down-and-outs who live in the caves that dot the sandstone ridges around Brooklyn and the Hawkesbury was revealing. Some say there are as many as 5000 living this way.
These guys aren’t all your usual alcohol soaked drop-outs, but they have chosen their spot with an eye to the view and the convenience. Keep a PO box down in the village for the disability cheque and an un/licenced rod and crab trap in the bushes…
Sorry Shaun I commiserate, don’t commute, know the train trip well, a marvel of engineering which wouldn’t get a look in with surplus Cossie nowadays. Whatever happened with the fast ferry service, Broken Bay to Circular Quay that was mooted. Now that would be something.
Having grown up on the Central Coast and spent my entire adult life in the city I can’t say I miss the Central Coast which was a boring black hole inhabited by such a stifling Anglo monocultural cultural cringe backwater that the first asians I ever met was when I went to Newcastle uni. And the best beaches like Catherine Hill Bay are miles out of the way anyway. I don’t appreciate the exhaust fumes and other pollution but at least there’s always something to do in Sydney - night markets, art shows, concerts, movies, fabulous food, great coffee - and I live and work in exciting, progressive multicultural environments. I have never felt the desire to holiday on the Central Coast because there are so many other great places to camp in NSW alone and when we stayed home last Christmas hols instead of migrating like all the other lemmings the Emerald City was all ours. It was great!
I honestly don’t share this Anglo urge to live right on top of sand, sun and surf day in day out when you have only 2/10ths of your time to enjoy it, 4/10s commuting and 4/10ths working in the city and your kids get bored with just going to the beach. And one of these days we will have emissions free cars - that’ll be the icing on the cake!
pablo, the fast ferry service oft mentioned but seems to be one of those projects that seems to always in need of an extensions. A press release from March this year has some information. I’m very skeptical whether the fast ferry will ever get off the ground and float.
dd, understand the feeling. As a new dad I would love to travel less to spend more time with my daughter. I can grab the odd day to work from home and there is a some flexibility in my work hours so that does help.
Shaun:
Fair go. This is Australia in 2007. We can’t let any of this “proper planning” nonsense happen. It’s not just a lack of planning for ordinary services but a lack of planning for major infrastructure and for industrial change [Wollongong and Newcastle for the wrecking of our steel industry; Queensland ports for the increase in overseas trade]
I gave up the car for the train when I was working in Sydney - long trip to work but I was able to use my travelling time for essential reading. Sometimes the trips were like that SBS program of a few years back, “Going Home”.