Cool Collector

Collector is a tiny hamlet just a little north of Canberra. Not much going on in that rural area, save for an unusual, unique, cool piece of folk art sculpture.

Behold the Dreamer's Gate. Kind of a mix of Watts towers and an HR Giger work. It was done by Tony Phantastes in the 1990s and, of course, left unfinished after a battle with the town council. Bureaucracies have no taste!

Semi abandoned things in open fields seems to be a theme of Collector. Old bus and an old flag.

Small town, small graveyards. And headstones.

Graves get flowers, whether plastic or under glass.

Another field, this time, for sport. Good luck to the mighty Bushrangers!

Riding The Cooma Monaro Railway

No riding anymore, just looking at the way train travel used to be through Cooma, a town about an hour south of Canberra. Like a lot of small town train stations, once the rail line in Cooma stopped stopping, the station became a museum.

The railway station exterior. Built in 1889 in the classic, "Railway Gothic" style, it's known as a roadside station.

On the platform side, a cart full of luggage. "I'm not joking, come claim your bag or it's going in the rubbish bin." The stationmaster has a nice office. Map on the wall says where the trains go. Safe by the desk says where the money goes. Keep it all moving...

Leveraging the train movements from inside the signal box shed. Blue is for boy trains, red is for girl trains. Right?

Ugh, so much paperwork. Rules and regulations, engineman's daily report, your identity card, journals, when does it end? At least passengers get to clean up. Who knew little travel soap could be collectible?

The big station water supply tank up on a hill.

Dy-No-Mite! Way out on its own, a box car filled with explosive supplies. The Cooma station is near the big Snowy Mountain Hydro project, a giant engineering complex of dams, reservoirs, power plants. Lots of blowing up mountains and taming rivers.

No trains, no need for a big turntable to keep them organized. Back to weeds.