new strip on the block

The new shopping/office block area facing Camp Road is proceeding apace - exciting! Mia joking refers to this as the future site of a pool supplies shop, which is a funny joke (maybe you have to live here to think so). This was previously a piece of vacant land, perhaps never built on, a block away from the station - christ, progress! I think (no, I assume) it was set aside for future expansion of the high school which has now been entirely relocated. Council is also doing a bit of signage.

Personally if I was Council I'd be less into erecting shopping mall extensions and more into trying to figure out a way to turn Broadmeadows city centre into something remotely visually and even practically coherent. As it is, it's a bunch of buildings - some fine in themselves, some shitty - adrift in a car park sea. I feel like I'm being encouraged to drive from the library to the shopping centre (a 1-minute walk). I have to remember that the City of Hume is not all about childless urbanites like us, but also about vast areas of relatively rural space as well as almost-public-transportless suburbia (though every day I thank our lucky stars some more for the 542 bus).

they're moving grandpa's grave to build a sewer

Not really, they've just entirely knocked down the 1960s and earlier administrative buildings at Broady now and the staff presumably are all relocated into the new 'green' building next door. I was a little saddened to see what I assume was an early municipal office - which looked Edwardian - go; you can see the shadow of it to the back of the 1965 town hall.


This is that site from the other side, in January this year.