The Flickr Fishermansbend Image Generatr

Over Abbottsford (Melbourne), Victoria, Australia

This is another shot looking toward the city, but a rather wider one than 19618. Over on the left of frame, about half way down, you can see the Melbourne Cricket Ground. That's the place from which we departed (strictly speaking it was the tall, brown building just in front of that, the Hilton On The Park), and the place that we were on our way back to.

From my Compact Melbourne Street Directory I believe that the main road cutting up from the lower right of the frame is the Eastern Freeway. Directly ahead of us is Abbotsford, a little to the right Collingwood... and the oval in the bottom centre of the image is Victoria Park, former home of the (in)famous Collingwood Football Club, the Magpies. (Currently abandoned, but apparently due to be refurbished as a community recreation facility.)
-----
Edit April 2025: Really? I had a compact Melbourne Street Directory back in 2011? It was a different time, and long before everyone went to Google Maps.

Huh. The things you forget. You can also forget about finding the aforementioned Hilton On The Park too; in 2014 it was transferred from Hilton to Accor and is now the Pullman Melbourne on the Park.

Also, take a look down to the bottom right. I do believe that that may be the Clifton Hill Shot Tower that we saw in shot 19618.

Anyway, apparently the refurbishment of Victoria Park went ahead, and it was reopened at the end of 2011. It is still used by Collingwood's state competition team and its women's teams, but is also a general purpose public space. (The men's national competition team had moved to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.)

One thing has changed markedly, though you won't be able to tell from this shot. Look out beyond the skyscrapers and find the Yarra River. Look at the land on the far side of that river. That includes the area known as Fisherman's Bend. The significance? In 1936 General Motors Holden, that 100% "Ahssie" car company (that had been owned by the American General Motors corporation since 1931) built a car manufacturing plant there. This became its principal production hub for a time, although in later years more of its manufacturing capacity moved to Elizabeth in South Australia. Fisherman's Bend / Port Melbourne remained the HQ for GMH to the end, however.

To the bitter, bitter end, that nobody saw coming in October 2011. Well, some did, they just had trouble believing it for in the post war years car sales in Australia consisted of Holden, daylight, then Ford, then other brands. As recently as 2010 the Holden Commodore (a large 4 door sedan) had been the number 1 annual seller in Australia, by that time for the preceding 15 years. But the cracks were appearing. By 2008 the Toyota Corolla had topped the sales chart for the first half of the year. Holden's non-Commodore smaller cars were usually eclipsed by Japanese and increasingly Korean brands.

And worse, the Commodore was the car for the Australia that was, not the Australia it was becoming with higher density living, less parking and worse traffic. The more compact Mazda 3 took the lead in the year of this photo. The slide was on. Manufacturing ceased at Fisherman's Bend in 2016, but at the time this shot was taken it was still pumping out engines and other vehicle components. But hey, it's still happening in Elizabeth, right? That closed in 2017. In that year Holden just became an importer of overseas models. Some notional design work still happened at Fisherman's Bend, but it was probably more cosplay than genuine, serious engineering.

Then the hammer dropped. Having milked all the government concessions it could, having extracted all the wage freezes possible from its workers, on 17 February 2020 GM sent an executive out in a rumpled suit and crooked tie to announce that the Holden brand would be "retired" (a nice euphemism for "metaphorically poleaxed") by 2021.

Australian motoring commentator John Cadogan had a response (and pardon the very Cadogan language which I've sanitised) to the GM executive who said this:
"...This was an agonising decision for us, and one that we didn’t make lightly or easily."
Cadogan wrote:
"That’s senior executive GM BSer Julian Blissett. To whom I’d say: Yeah. You did. Lightly and easily. You’ve been getting the ducks in a row for several months now. Selling all 'non-core' businesses globally, and boning right-hand drive production generally.
And just for the record, ahole, 'agony' is a state of extreme mental or physical suffering. So I don’t think it was agonising. And I put it to you, that you get paid six figures to do this sheet. You signed up for it. It’s your mission. And you flew here, probably up the pointy end of the plane, where the Veuve Cliquot is bottomless, to deliver this message. In your ill-fitting suit. With your tie that’s not even bleeping straight."

GM had indeed decided to abandon all right hand drive markets including the UK, New Zealand, Japan (like they even still existed there) and of course... Australia. In a single moment, the Holden company, whose roots date back to 1856, was no more. All of the factory buildings that you may or may not be able to make out in Fisherman's Bend will be redeveloped into various things including housing and – and try not to have a bitter, ironic smile if you're an Australian reading this - the University of Melbourne's School of Engineering. Mmm. {Looks around at the decaying remains of Australia's one time factories...} Engineering what, exactly?

Over Alphington (City of Darebin), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

This shot looks across the city and out to the south-western suburbs of Melbourne. The sweeping bend of the river and its principal bridges are clearly visible.

(There's no "Romaville"; that's an in-joke.)
-----
Edit May 2025: It has been long enough to explain the in joke. The river is of course the Yarra River, including some of the ports of Melbourne. The nearest bridge is the Bolte Bridge, which I'll describe further in image 19667.

The land enclosed by its left bank is Fisherman's Bend, which I'll describe in image 19683.

The peninsula jutting out beyond the river is Williamstown. The projection out of the bay beyond that peninsula is Altona. Let your eye trace along the curve of the shore beyond that and you'll reach Point Cook. In 1912, that was the birthplace of what would eventually become the Royal Australian Air Force. The Air Force Academy was there between the 1940s and the mid-80s. I may have ended up there, but the fates had other ideas. Oh, to return to the days when I could see without needing the services of an optometrist.

By the time you pass Point Cook the haze and mist obscures the shape of the coast but trust me, there is one there. And to the north of it is Werribee South, then Werribee. Back in the days when I first posted these shots, I had a friend called Roma who lived out that way. And hated it. (Hence, the photo title.) Socio-economically, Werribee is... how can I put this diplomatically? Not salubrious. Werribee and its northern neighbour Hoppers Crossing have been known to be used as punch lines in jokes about Melbourne.

I deliberately shot this one to show that I was thinking of her and her family briefly as we drifted past even though I could not see the place.

They bugged out of there yeeeeeaaars ago. In that sense I suppose that I could rename the photo... but the fact that it no longer has its original meaning in 2025 doesn't mean that it didn't have that meaning in 2011... or that the historical meaning isn't just as important as any latter day interpretation.

Over Alphington (City of Darebin), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

I've done some shots that are more pulled out and some that are more zoomed in of the Melbourne skyline; this one seems to sit somewhere in the centre.

It's hard to say exactly where we are above here; probably still somewhere above somewhere between Alphington and Abbotsford. I'm looking toward the south west but that's not where we're heading; the Melbourne Cricket Ground, our destination, is way, way off to the left of frame here.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I draw your attention to the domed building about 1/4 way up the frame and 3/4 of the way across. That is the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens, which visitors to some of my other Melbourne albums will be familiar with.

Drag your eyes to the left until you reach about 1/3 of the way out from the left frame. You're looking for 3 gothic spires. There you have St Patrick's Cathedral which sits behind Parliament House on the block bounded by Albert Street, Gisborne Street, Lansdown Street and Cathedral Place. (And which I misidentified as St Paul's Cathedral on Flinders Street in the first draft of this description, oops.)

Go half way up the right hand side of the frame and we see the Yarra River, with the Bolte Bridge straddling it. It was named after Liberal premier Sir Henry Bolte (1908-1990) who was in office from 1955 to 1972. So... from the post war era to the space age. That's quite a tenure.

The bridge was opened in August 1999, so Bolte missed seeing it finished by close to a decade. It's a twin cantilever / box girder road bridge which carries 8 lanes of traffic. Officially it's only 490 metres long, but it appears longer because it's part of a 5 kilometre elevated roadway between Flemington Road and the West Gate Freeway. It spans the Yarra River and Victoria Harbour in the Docklands precinct.

The land on the other side of that Bridge I'll come to in image 19683.

The Nikkor 50mm f1.2 is super soft at f1.2 and I was keen to get flares and blooms and noise.

Collins St

Spencer St

Flinders St

Collins St

Spencer St

Spencer St

Collins St

Collins St

Spencer St

Collins St