How peculiar

It was my first night in Melbourne and I was on my way back to my hostel. That afternoon I had met my supervisor Peter Johnston and one of his Phd students, Andrew, who I would be working with. After that I had just been walking through the city. I had explored the mega mall in the center with its impressive dome and had a simple dinner in one of the ‘restaurants’ on Swanston street.

I had just been on the Princess bridge to have a look over the Yarra river by night. The Yarra is often referred to as the river that flows upside down, as it is so muddy that it seems if the bottom of the river is at the surface. It was dark now, so the river just appeared as a black path winding in between the skyscrapers. The lights of the city made it a very nice view, so I tried to make a panoramic picture of it.

When I approached the crossing at Bourke street with William street I noticed that the traffic lights were not working. There were some policemen to control the traffic. Then I suddenly spotted a lot more people in fluorescent yellow vest. In the mean time I had already crossed the street, but I stopped for a while to observe the whole happening and count the number of people regulating the traffic. I counted at least 15 people and as one would expect having too much people on one job is contra efficient. Consequently half of them was doing nothing and the other half was giving contradictory orders. Luckily there was not much traffic (which made them even more redundant), so the traffic could easily regulate itself. Strange guys, those Australians! :-)