A flashback to Melbourne in 1998
Last week I finally bought a scanner, which is about the first time I’ve had a scanner at home for years. I ended up getting a fairly low-end Epson Perfection 3490 scanner, since for the moment if I want to do a few more decent scans I can do it on one of the $2,000 Epson Expression 1680 scanners at TAFE (if I ever get there). Though already I can see that it’s hard to get a scan that looks anything like the original.
Nonetheless, back in 1998 when I was a young teenager some friends wanted to do some go-karting down at Port Melbourne. So one of them convinced his dad to drive us, though on the way back we went via Victoria Dock. By that stage the harbour was closed as the “Bolte Bridge” (as it was later named) was beginning to block the way for ships. By that stage the docks had been abandoned and we could drive right out onto the wharf. There was something I liked about the baron atmosphere so not long later I went back with my own father along with the old Pentax SLR camera. So I took these photos in the Winter of 1998, knowing that the place was about to undergo a major change. Despite my dislike of freeways (a number of them are of the bridge construction), they do look rather impressive. I made a number of subsequent trips back to the place, amazed at the lack of graffiti despite being only minutes from the central city. While the horse stables (used for those horse and carriage rides that you see around the CBD) made it almost feel as though the place was stuck in a time warp.
Later in the year Kennett had one of his massive open days where he’d open up all his projects, so I was able to get some inside shots of the Docklands Stadium as it was under construction. Later I also took some pictures of some other parts of Melbourne for a web site that I had created. Though some of the shots had been scanned overtime, the scans have long been missing. So here they are, also to be compared with the same location but earlier this year:
- Melbourne 1998
- Victoria Harbour (April 2005)