working full time in a docklands retail space would be the closest thing i could imagine to hell on earth
if you were at highpoint you’d have shoplifters to break up the day a bit
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Melbourne has a LOT of things better than Sydney, but natural beauty and outdoor environment of Sydney is in a whole other league.
Don’t underestimate how much of Sydney is next to or close to the water, whether it be the harbour, or the beaches. Sydney is hilly as hell also, meaning fairly often there are parks high up with crazy views, which Melbourne’s flat topography doesn’t really allow for.
Admittedly out west isn’t as flash but you go further north or south and you’re surrounded by royal national park, blue mountains etc as well.
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Townhouses? Are you talking about Fishermen’s Bend / South Wharf?
Cause the entire south of the Docklands precinct is apartments and office blocks, spearheaded by the gross ANZ monstrosity that went up a few years ago
It’s the wind, and the AFL needing to have their finger in everything , that ruined what could have been.
Having a massive, ugly monolith right there just ruins the entire cityscape as well as the urban flow, and the view back to the city.
And then there’s the wind.
I actually like the walk on the south side. It’s out of the wind. But it just kind of ends, and there really is barely a person to be seen, even though there’s a whole shopping and bar district just the other side of the Jim Stynes bridge.
Plus the long skinny parks like Lane Cove Nat Park as well.
Basically it is the south-west that is grim.
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Yes, I was talking about Fisherman’s Bend as the most southern “Docklands” precinct. There are high rises there too.
To me those 3 areas all make up “Docklands”. They were developed at the same time by reclaiming the docks. The south side has both high rises and 3 storey Riverfront townhouses accessed from Lorimer St.
It’s the bit that’s out of the wind!
Ah gotcha, I guess I don’t consider anything across the river to be part of Docklands, I’ve always labelled it South Wharf due to the DFO there
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Thank you, I laughed so hard at the OP 
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Why do we want to see the Melbourne skyline???
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Hope no tassie blitzers put their hands up.
Was the James Squire pub near it though? Went there!!
I think I could count on one hand the number of times I have been anywhere in Docklands west of Harbour Esplanade.
So much of the Harbour fronting the Pacific was Crown Land, for Defence purposes, not popular for residents ( other than reffos) around WW2 - and Waverley Cemetery has some of the best Pacific Ocean front walks in the world.
Bondi and Tamarama were lovely simple places, lots of E European eateries etc, until it got developed for the white shoe brigade.
Now we can get down to business and build an IKEA on the site.
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My family and I went on it earlier this year (in between COVID lockdowns). We had a fundraising night at my baseball club for one of our juniors to go overseas with the Australian team and I had bought a family pass for the wheel for $50 during an auction. I had then promptly forgotten about it until the pass was unearthed earlier this year during some cleaning. We had a weekend where we stayed in the city in a friend’s apartment and took the kids on it. It was interesting, but that was about it. It was a fantastic, clear day on a weekend, and there were about three other groups on it at the same time. It was struggling beforehand, and COVID was the death-knell. The rest of the precinct is just weird and frustrating. They should bulldoze the lot and start again.
On a side note, a good friend of mine’s dad was the steel inspector when the wheel was originally built. He is also a qualified engineer, and when they inspected the steel before construction, he advised them that the steel (sourced from China - go figure) passed the standard they were asking for, but that the actual structural design of the wheel would be inappropriate for that grade of steel. They said “thanks, we’ll look after the design, you just certify the steel”, and rest is history. He declined to be involved in the redesign process.
On a second side-note, the same guy inspected and approved the steel that was used for the big flag-pole over Parliament House in Canberra. When he did the inspection of the cap to go on top of the flag-pole, he engraved his family’s names on the bottom edge of it. To his knowledge it’s still there on the flag-pole.
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Shame on you for the James Bond reference - check out the Ferris Wheel scene in the Third Man, featuring Orson Wells, with Anton Karas playing the Harry Lime theme tune.
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Even Jimmy Giggle knows Sydney’s CBD is pants.
It’s in his very first episode.
Yes unbelievable that places like Balgowlah (where “Nino’s house” in They’re a Weird Mob was built) were not really developed until the 1950s/60s - I suppose needing the Harbour Bridge and then interruption by the war held it back a bit. These are incredibly scenic waterfront locations.
I draw the line at the bridge. City side is “South Wharf”, other side is “Docklands”. They are quite different precincts, and once you go under the bridge there and walk around the marina it is a very different vibe. If memory serves this section started getting developed before South Wharf got properly developed with all of the bars and the shopping centre, but it still is far from done. The whole “Fishermen’s Bend” precinct development was only really stood up relatively recently, and the Docklands apartments and townhouses along there just kind of end in a Mirvac sign under the Bolte bridge, just past the yacht Ragamuffin.
Always on my “to watch” list, whilst never quite making it to the top.
Oh FK, the stress concentration is going to bring it down …