2025-06-10 -37 145

Location

On a footpath in Moorabbin, in Melbourne's southeast.

Participants

Expedition 1:

Steve

Expedition 2:

Expedition 1 (Steve)

Did you know there's an Italian food court called Il Mercato, near Southern Cross Station? I didn't, so I had to go there and have lunch with the DangerFolk to find that out.

Then I set off on my bike in a southeasterly direction. Not only was I going to claim a geohash, I was hopefully going to claim some new squadrats and squadratinho's. If you don't know what those are, well...I suppose they're no weirder and more arbitrary than geohashing, though they do seem a bit weird and arbitrary. Kind of like tiny graticules but you just have to ride a bike through them to claim them. You don't need to do the hard part of waiting around for a geohash to land in the right spot.

The thing I did not have was a plan. I knew where I was currently. I knew where I wanted to be. I knew, in a very general way, how roads work. But there weren't really any great roads for cycling from where I was to where I wanted to be. So I just...winged it.

I winged east. I winged south. I winged across big roads. I winged down small roads. I winged along a little road that, suprisingly to me, had markers claiming it was part of the Rosstown Rail Trail. There are two important things to know about the Rosstown Rail Trail. The first is that I wrote that Wikipedia article, and made the map that is on it. The second is that it follows the route of the former Rosstown Railway. There are many important things to know about that, which you can learn by reading the Wikipedia article, which I also contributed to.

At some point I discovered an impressive fruit tree growing on a nature strip. It seemed to be growing either pears or nashis. I tried eating a couple, but they weren't really quite ripe. Something about the flavour told me they'd make really good liqueur though.

Crossing the Nepean Highway wasn't a heap of fun, though I tried to find amusement in the slightly off-kilter red-man pedestrian light.

Eventually I found myself at the geohash. Just as I pulled over to claim my prize, a tradie in a ute had the same idea. It could have gotten a little awkward, but I just ignored him very hard. He kind of out-ignored me by taking a call on his phone. Steve 0, Random Tradie 1.

Now I had to do it all again but to Fitzroy now. I still had no plan. Sigh. I wingled and wangled and suddenly found myself face to face with McKinnon High School during school pickup time.

For those not in the know, this school is, for reasons I'm not real clear on, the most sought after government (read: free) high school. Under Victoria's school zoning laws, if you live in "the zone" (a specific hand-drawn area containing the school), your kids get to go to McKinnon. If you don't, they probably don't. Unless you do some shenanigans, like rent a house in the zone for a couple of years, get your kids established in the school, then move back to wherever you really live. That works.

Anyway, it was chaos. Kids streaming out everywhere. Cars doing stupid car things. Teachers creating impromptu pedestrian crossings with the power of the orange high vis vest. My yellow high vis vest was no match for it, and I had to wait.

I wingled and wongled some more and found myself on the Djerring Trail, which is a bike path that goes under the elevated sections of the Cranbourne/Pakenham line. We all like it very much. I followed it for a bit. Then I found a quiet street heading north, and eventually came to the Gardiners Creek Trail. That was a relief, because all the wingling and wongling was really getting a bit exhausting. It was nice to be on familiar ground, able to travel more than a kilometre without making decisions about which way to go next.

The sun suddenly came out as I moved along the pontoon section, and life was beautiful, if very glarey. Then I found a KT, who didn't get to go geohashing, but got to eat some chicken and chips anyway. Life is grand.