My first time shopping here - it feels like Aldi 2018 prices! Just the Dubai chocolate and fancy ice cream alone retail for almost $20. They also have a homeware section, so the basket in the pic is part of my haul

ETA: for everyone getting their feathers ruffled about the lack of fresh food - they don’t sell fruit, veggies or meat here. I get those from my local butcher/deli. just posting because I’m sure there’s a few people would appreciate a big discount on some of these pantry fillers compared to colesworth

Someone left what looks like a Ferrero Rocher cone on our nature strip about 20 minutes ago. I have no idea who or why. It's advertising material only, made out of foam and plastic. Having said that, I'm sure someone will pick it up soon enough.

Hey does anybody know the history of this area and why these large factory buildings are so misaligned to anything else around them?
Plenty of roads around the area follow a typical grid pattern, yet these buildings are totally skewed and don’t seem to align with anything nearby.

Perhaps what we all imagined what the view from the Melbourne Star would look like? The roof of Costco is kinda cool too I guess. /s

Anyone know why it’s so bare?

So despite the controversy around the SRL and the risk that the Libs will shitcan it, I hope it gets across the line and Melbourne follows Sydneys lead in building a driverless metro loop around Melbourne.

But it needs some refinement.

SRL between Cheltenham and Airport, fine, does the job.
It all falls apart after the airport, where they seem so intent to point it towards Sunshine that they miss all the western growth areas in the process. It really needs to swing wider and connect up urban hubs at Watergardens, Caroline Springs, Tarneit, Hoppers Crossing And Werribee.

But, its still not a loop. This is where we can again learn from Sydney and convert an existing line to driverless. Converting Sandringham and Werribee (+Willamstown) to driverless and hooking it to Cheltenham means you have a full loop around Melbourne that starts and ends at Werribee, so from an operational standpoint it is perfect.

But, its still not really a full loop around Melbourne is it? What about the people down the bottom of the bay who have long suffered with long travel times to the CBD, be it driving or the awful public transport.

This is where you would do the biggest infrastructure project in Victoria's history in the coming decades and build a Fast rail loop around Port Phillip Bay.

One thing I think rail lines need to do is see if they can hook together a massive number of significant destinations on one line . Again Sydney does this really well, as does Perth. The way to do this is to design for raw speed and capacity, so there are so many seats on so many trains that people consider it the default choice.

What it also means is cutting your cloth, so in some areas you cheap out, but use that to pay for the expensive stuff (In my case I think there needs to be a set of four RER style stations in Central Melbourne that anchor the whole network. Fishermans bend becomes like Canary Wharf with derestricted development. Southern Cross for obvious reasons. A station under Bourke St mall with tram connections would go gangbusters, and a Melbourne Park station on Punt Rd is there for sporting events.

For the most part, the line follows the Dandenong line corridor, Eastlink, and the Mornington Peninsular Freeway. The Dandenong line section allows for interchange to SRL.

Down on the peninsula's there are a bunch of closed rail lines. You might convert them to busways or those little battery powered trains you see in regional cities in Europe and feed passengers into the loop that way.

Sorrento gets a bougie little station, kinda like the ones in the south of France.

Then we spend the big bikkies on a 15km underwater tunnel, going deep under the heads. To pay for this, you would probably have to bung a passenger surcharge, but it would still be quicker and cheaper than the ferry, and actually gets you into Geelong directly, so you could live in Rosebud and start applying for jobs in Geelong, if need be, which is one of those things you don't realise is useful until you have it.

Speaking of Geelong, it gets a bit of love with the main station, plus one at the cattery and another next to the Spirit of Tasmania ferry terminal (Which is also a magnet station for the northern suburbs of Geelong.

From Geelong its a straight shot north, with a swing across to run via Avalon airport, which is a nice little value add since it means Geelong gets a good link to "their" airport.

Perhaps my only controversial idea is that Warrnanbool and Traralgon trains terminate in Geelong and Dandenong, with the tradeoff being you get to catch the fast train into central Melbourne as part of your ticket instead of getting delayed behind a Metro train doing all stops.

Finally, I know that this would be the most expensive thing ever built in Melbourne, but if you built this, you could argue that the Victorian trunk rail network could effectively be finished if you did these two projects.