On the hunt for suburban oddities

It's late afternoon, the shadows are getting longer, and I start to wonder, 'will I find it before dark?' Or, worse still, has avid reader of this column, Jas Hugonnet of Hughes, sent me on a wild goose chase?

But I needn't have worried, for soon I spot a wooden one, then a concrete specimen and finally, there ahead of me, looming large on the horizon is a single stobie pole. Phew, Jas was right after all.

These power poles, made of two steel joists held apart by a slab of concrete, are quintessentially South Australian and were invented by engineer James Stobie in response to a lack of suitably long, straight and termite-resistant timber in South Australia back in the 1920s.

In fact, ask any South Australian living beyond their state border what they miss most, and invariably they'll answer West End beer (I think I'd rather drink Adelaide water), Arnott's Yo-Yo biscuits (really), Bung Fritz (give me Devon any day) and stobie poles.

Apart from the Northern Territory (where similar timber shortages abound) a sighting of stobie poles in another states is rare and that's why Jas was so surprised to find this one lurking on the lower slopes of Red Hill. "Was it transported here, and when?" he asks.

Keen to get to the bottom of this urban mystery, your akubra-clad columnist tracked down a spokesperson for Evoenergy, the company who look after all the poles in the ACT.

It turns there are many more stobie poles in the ACT than you'd expect.

"There are approximately 350 stobie poles in the ACT, almost all installed in the 1940-50s", reveals the spokesperson. "Apart from Red Hill they are scattered around some of Canberra's older suburbs and also Paddys River Road near the Cotter."

What's more, Canberra's Evoenergy crews cherish these out-of-place poles as much as any parochial South Australian and they are especially "loved for their durability and design".

However, a word of warning for anyone wanting to acquaint themselves with Canberra's collection of stobie poles - you'd better be quick for each pole is designed to last only 70-80 years and Evoenergy have started to replace them with either concrete or fibreglass poles.

As to why there are stobie poles in the ACT remains a mystery. Perhaps there was an oversupply in South Australia in the 1940s and 50s and they were offloaded to the national capital at a bargain basement price? Someone must know.

During these times of limited travel, with more Canberrans exploring their own suburbs, several other mysterious objects have been brought to this column's attention, including a series of wooden fences in some of the underpasses beneath Gungahlin and Caswell Drives.

"Just what is its purpose?" asks Roger Bacon of McKellar of the wooden fence under Caswell Drive in Aranda. "The structure was already there under the pre-existing bridge and was extended when the road was duplicated." Another reader, Dave Moore, writes: "It's not the type of fence you would build to mark the boundaries of a property".

According a spokesperson for the ACT Government's Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate (EPSDD), "this wooden pole structure is to help tree-dwelling animals such as possums and sugar gliders to safely cross beneath the road without having to travel on the ground, where they would be more vulnerable to predators".

Some of these underpasses also have an unbroken series of logs and rocks for ground dwelling animals to move without being seen or preyed on.

While it's encouraging to see such initiatives installed for our native wildlife, I wonder about their efficacy. On close inspection (albeit briefly) I found no tracks, scats or other signs of any animal, apart from homo sapiens, using the crossings. Has anyone ever spotted an animal using these crossings? Surely it would make a great study for a university honours student to monitor the success of such structures?

Still near Aranda, Campbell Macknight asks, "Can you help with a mystery that puzzles me every time I drive or walk over the bridge across Caswell Drive that leads into Bandjalong Crescent?" Also highlighted by ochre-coloured retaining walls, it's a bridge readily recognised by most Canberrans.

"On the south side of the bridge there is a pedestrian path with a high metal screen, presumably to prevent anything falling or being thrown onto the roadways below," reports Campbell, adding, "underneath the sections of screen there are lights pointing upwards."

If you look closely the screens are arranged unevenly, prompting another reader to ask if they'd been fitted by a drunk road crew.

"Just why are these screens constructed like this?" asks Campbell, explaining "given the strong metal beams which support the screen and the way they have been made, this is clearly not just a defect or damage since construction."

According to a spokesperson from Transport Canberra and City Services, this wiggly fence", or 'throw screen' as it is officially referred to, "is actually an art feature of the bridge" which had to be extended to allow Aranda residents to access Black Mountain Nature Reserve.

"The coloured concrete retaining walls are designed to resemble the ACT's geology and colours," reports my government insider, adding "and the pedestrian bridge extension incorporates a steel and concrete sculpture."

Heck, an art installation. Who'd have thought.

An interpretation sign placed near the bridge to advise users of the artistic reason for its unnervingly wiggly appearance, might make a worthy addition to this roadside oddity.

It might also reinstall our faith that road workers aren't drinking on the job.

CONTACT TIM: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick.

Canberrans are responding to self-isolation in various ways, some are undertaking long overdue (sorry Mrs Yowie!) household maintenance chores, others have signed up to online educational courses while others have taken up new hobbies, some more bizarre than others.

"I've discovered a 'thing' called ghost signs," reveals Georgia Curry of Higgins. "While there are no paranormal entities involved, it describes the fading remains of historic, hand-painted signs", explains Georgia, adding "to qualify as a ghost sign it must be more than 50 years old and advertise a product that is now obsolete."

"Now, I don't know if it's the self-iso talking but I found all of this quite intriguing," confesses Georgia, who earlier this week photographed her first ACT ghost sign, in Kingston.

Are there more around the ACT?

One reader who knows very well that Mt Bimberi (1913m) is the highest mountain in the ACT is Tony Weir of Melba, who walked to the top in the summer of 1973-74 with a small group from the Canberra Bushwalking Club.

"The part I remember most was that the cairn at the top had a book where you could record your visit and there were just seven names in the book for the whole of 1973," reports Tony. Based in Britain at the time, Tony attests, "this was in stark contrast with the lower slopes of Ben Nevis (at 1345m, Britain's highest peak), where the crowds on any given day were almost as thick with walkers as the path around Lake Burley Griffin on a sunny afternoon during the current so-called lockdown".

"The steeper summit path was slightly less busy, but nevertheless the log book atop Ben Nevis showed hundreds (maybe even thousands) of names per year - too many for me to count, anyway," he reports.

Clue: Mr Murray likes it here

Degree of difficulty: Medium - Hard

Last week: Congratulations to Greg Norman of Melba who was first to correctly identify the location of last week's photo as Piccadilly Circus - the name ironically given to the not-so-busy-as-its-English-namesake intersection of the Brindabella, Mt Franklin and Two Sticks roads in the Brindabellas. The photo, taken in the 1940s when Piccadilly Circus still had the traditional name of 'Top of the Mountain', features Walter and Annetta Dowling, the parents of John Dowling of Brindabella Homestead fame.

Elizabeth Chan provides some insight into the intersection's name. "In 1953 somebody put up a sign calling it Piccadilly Circus and each subsequent attempt to remove it was thwarted," she exclaims.

Greg just beat many other readers including Jonathan Mandl of Griffith, Peter Connell of Gowrie and Peter Franklin of Newcastle to bragging rights. Peter was born at the Canberra Community Hospital in May 1949 and spent the first year of his life at the Bulls Head Forestry Settlement just a few kilometres from where this photo was taken.

Meanwhile, Ian Petersons of Macquarie recalls the intersection from the 1950s and 60s when he used to ski Mt Franklin and "drive to the Mt Ginini ski run in a VW beetle."

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and suburb to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday 16 May, 2020 win bragging rights. Tickets to Dendy Cinemas will once again be given as a prize when the cinemas reopen.

According to Peter Hopgood of Curtin, shortly after the construction of a retaining wall on the Cotter road near Curtin, this 'sheep' suddenly appeared.

"It's probably a stray splash of tar spray applied after grass seed was sown," explains Peter.

I'm not sure about you, but I think it more closely resembles a seal.