yarraville to tottenham along stony creek

Perry and I decided to take a walk from Yarraville to Tottenham today. Actually, we decided we would walk to Sunshine but my foot hurt too much (don't ask) and I abbreviated the operation. Perry didn't mind. He was at the stop and sniff everything stage of the walk anyway. 

As so often happens when I uploaded the photos here they all came out in the reverse order I took them, but whatever, doesn't matter does it. Here are a few pictures from the Tott end, a bunch of houses I like to imagine are Anders Hansen homes from the late 20s-early 30s but I don't really know that, except he was the main builder in that area and these houses are all more or less the same dimensions and same age. This boarded-up one is interesting...

I love this brick 'n' weatherboard creation it's rad as:

This 'is what it is'... 

I'm in a guessing mood (after about 3/4 hour of fruitless research) so I'm going to say this could once have been the premises of Riverside Manufacturers. It was apparently a big concern in Paramount Rd, Tottenham, in the middle of last century. 

I like to document Pam the Bird wherever/whenever. 

I have a very soft spot (as Rowena Wallace's character on Cop Shop, Pamela, said to George Mallaby as Glenn in an episode I just watched - 'in the head' - for late period Housing Commission homes, which is what I think these might be, in a dead end street in Yarraville. They're nice.

A-a-a-a-anyway, it was a decent enough walk, Perry was extremely well-behaved, it was too hot and glary, which is just life going forward I suppose, I mentioned the bit about the sore foot, fuck that, 

stony creek backwash this morning

No words, you don't need words for this, unless you want to (try to) read the signs. 
 

cherry lake

I am not kidding, as a child I was obsessed by Cherry Lake, also known as Lake Cherry. I used to look at it in the Gregorys and wonder wtf it could possibly be. I couldn't imagine what it could even slightly look like. It became one of those things, I don't know if you have things like that, but it was a place of great mystery that kind of entered into a particular plane of consciousness whereby I could hardly deal with it. Well today, without any particular forethought, I dealt with it. I went there. I was there. 

It was honestly an accident. Perry and I went to look at the Stony Creek backwash and having done that, coming out of the little cul-de-sac where I'd parked, I realised I didn't have a chance of turning right and going back towards the city so I turned left assuming at some point I'd be able to make a more convenient or practical turn. Then eventually I was just heading towards Williamstown and a worm in my head said go to Cherry Lake. It wasn't hard. 

Here is Perry examining not a cherry but an apple in Cherry Lake. It was presumably put there for flavouring. 

Here he is contemplating existence and ducks.

Oddly enough a lot of the path around the lake is placed in such a way you can't see it a lot of the time, so great is the distance, and the foliage. 

So, for instance, this is looking out across to the lake but where is it, ya know? 

Presumably this very overgrown and fenced-off path was once a path to the lake, but I wouldn't fancy your chances now. 

This is where something called Cherry Creek enters Cherry Lake. Whatever Cherry Creek has in it, the ducks love it. 

You can see them in the middle distance there. 

Picture where the oil refineries and the city skyline blend across the lake, #1. 

Picture where the oil refineries and the city skyline blend across the lake, #2 (with swans).

So that's Cherry Lake. I now have no more mysteries, at all, in my life. At all. 

Cherry Lake reentered my consciousness incidentally a few months ago when some paper ran a story on the actor Pia Miranda, who apparently walks its perimeter every day I think. I spent a lot of time there trying to remember her last name, my brain throwing up various other Pias, not that there are millions, but Pia Zadora obviously etc. I have since realised where I was going terribly wrong - for some reason I got it into my head that Pia Miranda was Pino Amenta's daughter, but I couldn't really remember his name either, and if I was sailing towards that notion, well, her name is obviously not Pia Amenta. It took a fucking long time to piece it together. Pino Amenta's actor daughter's name is Jade. Pia Miranda has nothing to do with the Amentas at all. Sorry to all concerned. I could have cleared it up with two minutes of wikipedia wandering but I was lazy. 

Oh, and here it is from not the 1975 Gregorys but the 1966 Melways when it was still known as a swamp. There was a lot more swamp around it then too seemingly. I MISS THOSE DAYS

the area formerly known as tottenham: 2 - stony creek

So for a creek that has apparently a history of extreme flooding...  

Stony Creek has a lot of properties very close to its edge, far closer than most urban creeks I am familiar with. I would have liked to traverse more of SC (so I probably should've - oh well, some other day). 

The part of the creek west of Paramount Rd which has no path or anything just thick undergrowth and a lot of blackberries.