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Last updated on July 2nd, 2017 at 09:17 am
Furious that nobody supports her anti–dredging campaign, Traceeee Hutchison lashes out:
No one in Melbourne cares …
Melburnians have never valued the bay as an asset. Still don’t. Because, in the end, Melbourne is a port city and port cities aren’t about aesthetics. They’re about business and infrastructure and Melburnians — in their silent complicity in backing this project — have turned back the clock 100 years. Forget about Melbourne being a dynamic, forward-looking aesthetic city rich in culture. It’s a fantasy. It’s a big, ugly, smelly port that is about to get bigger, uglier and smellier.
Nonsense; Melbourne is a beautiful place. In other seabed news:
Britain’s own underwater “Atlantis” could be revealed for the first time with hi-tech underwater cameras.
Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast.
Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion.
That was back in the 13th century. Notably, Dunwich never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
- 3. Grimmy
Thought that rang a bell.“Eh-y-ya-ya-yahaah – e’yayayaaaa… ngh’aaaaa… ngh’aaa… h’yuh… h’yuh… HELP! HELP! …ff – ff – ff – FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH!…”.I wouldnt be diving there if I were them…
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 01 18 at 11:13 PM • permalink
traceeeeee should fuck off to north korea where there is no trade & the lights don’t shine. of course melbourne people like money & trade. the whole place got going during the gold rush, indicative of a healthy respect for money-grubbing. we like being australia’s busiest port. the bay’s been dredged before. the rip has been blasted before. we still have a bay, & very nice it is too, with something like 47 swimmable beaches, despite more than 150 years of shameless capitalism
Good to see Traceeee’s love affair with a particular type of punctuation – I’m talking about the dash – continues unabated.
Dashes allow a person to include digressions – any snide thought that drops into your head – without having to resort to sound sentence structure and logical progressions.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 01 18 at 11:38 PM • permalink
No kidding? Dashes do that? I thought that was what commas were for?
Dang. All this time spent trying to figure out proper deployement of commas and it was dashes I should have been studying up on.
Just out of curiosity… where do the dot strings and brackets come in to play? Properly I mean. Was there supposed to be a comma or a dash there? After the properly-,I mean. Can it be doubled up on to ensure complete coverage?
I’m so want to go back in time and meet the guy that invented grammar. I got a bone to pick with him.
Sorry about going all off topicy and into the me-ism. But it’s not my fault. No one told me that there’d be innernets and blog comments when I was studying in school. I got set up. It’s not fair.
This must be a mistake. This would never happen is Kevni Rudd and his environmental minister Peter Garrett knew it was happening. Traceeee could fix this with a couple of phone calls.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2008 01 19 at 12:16 AM • permalink
Poor Traceeeee, she obviously doesn’t understand that a working port actually…well…needs to work, if the import/export industry is to function.
Much like ours in Newcastle, which has the largest export tonnage throughput of any coal port, and is undergoing a new dredging program to the squeals of local greenies.
Fortunately, the precious darlings were every bit as capable in preventing this new round of dredging as they have been in shutting down 100m tonnes a year of coal exports.
Having sailed into and out of Port Phillip Bay in 2007, IMHO the channel is a disgrace for bulk shipping and should be dredged, straightened and widened far beyond the scale currently proposed.
Bugger the sea grass.
I bet Traceeeeeeee would love to see Melbourne suffer the same fate as Dunwich.
Thankfully, that is unlikely to happen. Not only does it preserve a beautiful and thriving community, Melbourne’s survival provides us with endless entertainment, watching Traceeeeeeee throw temper tantrums.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 01 19 at 12:30 AM • permalink
Damn, that is a beautiful city. Kind of like Boston/Cambridge MA might be if they moved it someplace that doesn’t suck.
I’d get behind moving the place in a minute. Think of all the lovely delicious carbon!
Posted by Don’t Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2008 01 19 at 12:38 AM • permalink
Alternatively, would you mind moving Melbourne to Maine? Anywhere on Casco Bay would be fine. Thanks!
Posted by Don’t Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2008 01 19 at 12:38 AM • permalink
> Melbourne is a port city and port cities aren’t about aesthetics.
Can anyone name a *major* world city which is not a “port city”, not counting Rome, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles?
Honestly, I’m just curious; I thought that most major cities, (ergo, most OLD cities), developed around port traffic. So…
?
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2008 01 19 at 12:56 AM • permalink
That column was a new low for Traceeeee. Her writing usually sounds pretty demented, but this approached the rambling, non-sequitur paranoid style I’ve only seen in the unedited letters to the Toorak Metro News (or whatever it’s called these days – hopefully someone besides me gets that piece of crap pushed through their letterbox every few weeks).
Anyway, she blew her claim to be a resident of the Mornington Peninusla with this
Sorry, Greg, but your cover’s just been blown. I just thought those blue-ribbon Liberal voters who just re-elected you — the ones with the prime bay-fronting real estate that will bear the brunt of the filthy water that will lap up on the shore in your electorate — had a right to know.
I imagine he’s shitting himself. For Christ’s sake, I grew up on the Peninsula. Has Traceeeee ever been to (say) Portsea or Sorrento? We’re talking Lindsay-Fox-level millionaire country here. The chances of these residents voting Labour is equal to my chances of wearing the baggy green.
Poor woman’s delusional.
Posted by Renegade Lawyer on 2008 01 19 at 01:09 AM • permalink
#20, those PR photos that Tim managed to dredge up (excuse the pun) sure have you fooled. In fact, Melbourne is a weather shithole with the worst climate of any major Australian city. Physically, most of the city is ugly, too.
The attractions of Melbourne lie elsewhere – it’s a great city because of its urban environment and the things that people do there. Pretty damn good shopping, too, for an occasional visitor from Brisbane.
Amongst other things the channel deepening will save greenhouse gases by allowing more stuff to be transported in fewer trips, and create 500 permanent jobs for a predominantly blue collar workforce.
Not that Traceee cares excessively about that.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 01 19 at 01:56 AM • permalink
- Yes down with those smelly ugly ports where no one cares and culture never happens like Hamburg, New York, San Francisco, Lisbon, Rio, Venice, Bordeaux, Chicago etc etc she really is a dizzy fucksicle on bouncing bicycle.
But let’s cut her some slack. Behind all this is a slackjawed woman standing on her doorstep in the middle of the night as Peter Garret gets back into his car going “er, no. Actually I was just driving you home. Goodbye”Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 01 19 at 01:57 AM • permalink
If anyone is interested, you can, if you are very lucky, hear more about Dunwich in the largely unreleased Al Stewart song “Coldest Winter In Memory”, which is about events in the year 1709. Apparently, part of Dunwich fell into the sea at this time. Also, the sea froze off the coast of France, and King Charles of Sweden decided it would be a good time to invade Russia. It didn’t go well.
I think it’s evident that the people of Melbourne do value the bay. It makes a great place for ships to go in and out of. That’s why they want to dredge it.
Posted by Steven C. Den Beste on 2008 01 19 at 03:02 AM • permalink
- Mind you if they did what she wanted and built a brand new port elsewhere the chances of her being happy about that would be what??
Maybe they could move it up the coast a bit and put some heavy rail through her precious area instead, with maybe the marshaling yards and truck depot next door?
Or does she think her cheap Jap fridge, french charddonay, and chinese DVD players are made in a yurt in Nimbin?Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 01 19 at 03:27 AM • permalink
Tim, i know you do it for us, but I’d advise laying off the Tracees until your op is over.
Resolve to deal with only one tumoour at a time.
Posted by carpefraise on 2008 01 19 at 04:15 AM • permalink
#24 hey! another devoted reader of the MetroNews! hail fellow well met!
Now isn’t that an interesting little rag? Had a bit of a changeover and now is so very fashionably left. i find I need a good deep breath after my perusal of it, though they at least do publish letters from readers with opposing views, which is, at least, technically virtuous.
Posted by carpefraise on 2008 01 19 at 04:18 AM • permalink
It’s a big, ugly, smelly port that is about to get bigger, uglier and smellier.
Good. The bigger and smellier the better. A port that is not ugly and smelly is not worth having. As a kid I loved big, smelly ports. Still do. Fish, tarred hawsers, diesel, seagulls, wheat dust. Heaven. This was in the days when you could just bike down to the wharf and have a mosey around. Not these days regrettably due to security.
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.Traceee is a world-class hypocrite. I reckon if you visited her at home (shudder) you’d find it chock-full of Chinese and maybe even European appliances and, at the moment, Californian citrus, all brought here on large container ships that sailed right through her precious bay and up to Melbourne’s doorstep without complaint.
Still, nice work if you can make a living writing drivel for Age readers. They lap it up.
Posted by walterplinge on 2008 01 19 at 04:29 AM • permalink
“Increased economies of scale – more cargo in less shipping movements equal improved costs which help make Australia’s exports more competitive.”
From the Channel Deepening Project website. I had to email them it wrankled so much. It’s FEWER not ‘less’ you silly twats.
Posted by walterplinge on 2008 01 19 at 04:36 AM • permalink
Went to visit Rye, on the Sussex coast in the UK last weekend.
I asked the people who took me why the town is now so far away from the coast now. (Its a 5-10 min drive, but previously the water washed up to the town walls)
Responses:
“Climate change”
“Its all these cars on the roads causing more emissions and making the sea recede”Of course, I am glad that the local museum has got it straight. All that explanation, and not one mention of carbon!
FWIW, I looked up the Age on wiki. (I’ve never had any luck linking there.) It sayeth, “From its foundation the paper was self consciously liberal in its politics…supporting the removal of all restrictions upon freedom of commerce…” I guess liberal doesn’t mean what it used to mean, but we all knew that.
Posted by dean martin on 2008 01 19 at 07:28 AM • permalink
3. Dunwich? The Horror!
That comment brought back old memories. I read The Dunwich Horror back in high school. One of Lovecraft’s finest.
Poor Traceeeeee. I imagine she’s been on an Aqua Velva bender over this news, poor lass.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2008 01 19 at 11:25 AM • permalink
They found Dunwich? Send the submarine, if the RN still has any…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 01 19 at 12:00 PM • permalink
“Forget about Melbourne being a dynamic, forward-looking aesthetic city rich in culture.”
How does she think all that “culture” gets paid for?
Here’s a primer for her.
1. Money is sucked out of the government to sponsor plays attended by 235 of her closest friends (because, of course, those plays could never make it on their own merits) thereby increasing the richness of the city culture.
2. That money extorted from the government comes from taxes on the population.
3. The wages and the business income being taxed to supply that money comes directly from commerce of all kinds, including the large volume of commerce that comes through the port of Melbourne.
I’m sure Traceee is probably in love with the cultural scene in New York. Does she not think or realize that the bigger, uglier, smellier parts of New York help to pay for all that?
Maybe Traceeee should move to a city without that ugly smelly port. She can be the first citizen of Geothermia! Let’s all chip in to buy her a canteen and a solar-powered tent…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 01 19 at 12:51 PM • permalink
I like the harbour
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 01 19 at 01:34 PM • permalink
#6 Mr. Mole, Dunwich apparently lies in 10 -50 feet of water (3 – 17 metres) with visibility on a par with the Ottawa River. Sounds good to Wimpy diver.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 01 19 at 01:37 PM • permalink
#23 Ottawa. Moscow. Peking. Paris. Berlin.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 01 19 at 01:43 PM • permalink
But isn’t there a fat river d’eau running right through the heart of Paris, Wimpy?
Also, when I said “*major*” cities, I was thinking of keeping the bar a little above Ougadougou.
And as far as “Little Rock”… !
Oh well, nuff said. I turn away in humiliating defeat, my anthropological theories dashed like so much fragile flotsam against the rocks of critical peer review.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2008 01 19 at 04:14 PM • permalink
#59 Zeppen, yes my cities of choice are on rivers, but they became cities because they were a crossing point, not a port.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 01 19 at 06:54 PM • permalink
#59 Yeah, Zep, but “Ouagadougu” is the best. name. ever.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2008 01 20 at 01:02 AM • permalink
Ouagadougu always puts me in mind of Noel Coward’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It’s as if they decided naming their country Burkina Faso just wasn’t funny enough.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2008 01 20 at 09:42 PM • permalink
1.618, The quark thing looks astounding. Just astounding. You have your cold weather gear. Anything stopping you?
Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2008 01 24 at 07:50 AM • permalink
Traceeeee:
Ma’am. Please look at it from out perspective.
How do folk know you’re serious until you do something other than spout off at the mouth?
Look, what you need to do is get some real publicity for your position on this issue.
I suggest going to a central location in town or a busy place near the harbor. There, you douse yourself in petrol (notice use of culturally sensitive term there?) and light yourself into a blaze.
There’s no way in hell they’d be able to ignore you then.