Author: David

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Australia 2013-14: Week 1

Here are some edited pictures from our first week in Australia; in Western Australia, after arriving from Singapore on Saturday 14th of December to temperatures around 38, and England losing the Ashes in the nearby WACA.

We had left Cardiff in a bit of a rush (to say the least) on Thursday the 12th, but caught the coach and plane to Singapore comfortably. Nothing eventful to tell about our journey, we used the The Ambassador Transit Hotel at Changi to good effect, sleeping well and recovering a good bit of our jet lag before our trip to Perth, and I enjoyed a trip down memory lane in the Hard Rock Cafe in the airport.

On the Saturday evening we went to the Soda Cafe on the seafront for dinner and watched a firework display (after the sunset which we’d missed). We were staying at the Trigg Retreat B&B which was lovely run by Sue Stein and husband Bryson who we’ll be eternally grateful to, for sawing through our case lock, which had mysteriously lost its set combination.

Sunday saw us visiting Jo Manning (a friend of Pete’s from Cardiff Uni days) and her husband Ben and son George. We had a lovely afternoon with them and their friends, two of whom took us all the way back to Trigg, which was very kind for two Poms trying to acclimatise to the heat, one of whom had signs of an asthma attack coming on! The evening saw us on the seafront at Trigg again, where I took the pictures of the sunset you see in the slideshow below.

On the Monday, two of the guests from the B&B took us into the city centre which was again very kind, and we spent some time going round the shops before deciding going to Fremantle (Freo) on the ferry … only we didn’t, we went to South Perth – my mistake; you can’t catch a ferry to Freo, you cruise there. Still, it gave us an excuse to sit in The Windsor Hotel, have a glass of Little Creatures and chill. It was still very hot!

On Tuesday, we were up and early and off to Cervantes for a trip away from Perth, with a chance to see the Western Australian coast and the desert landscape of Pinacles near Cervantes. Deserted roads, dead kangaroos by the wayside, but little else on the drive north. We popped into Guilderton – hoping for a cup of coffee, but instead had a great chat with two bikers from nearby Clarkston who were delighted to have found the place after several attempts previously – it’s also called Moore River. We had the coffee and a couple of pies and chips (not bad) at Lancelin, just a little bit further up the coast, and headed off to Cervantes via Lake Thetis which is pretty unusual at it’s a location for stromatolites – some of the oldest organisms on earth, credited with giving the earth oxygen, and thus life for all other more complex forms of life – like us! We had a little difficulty in finding our B&B for the evening – The Amble Inn, which was in truth a ranch on a rise overlooking the coastal plain – just perfect for a sunset whilst sipping the complementary wine, only the sun and clouds weren’t performing that night. Our host, Dennis, was without his wife – she’d been in hospital for a few weeks, so he did us proud under the circumstances, and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening in the countryside, except … my asthma coughing kicked-in.

After breakfast it was off to The Pinacles desert in The Nambung National Park. What a landscape, so glad we made the effort, and so glad it had cooled down quite a bit for the day. The pictures tell the story I think, and if you look at the link, you’ll see that there is no definitive explanation for why these lime structures are sticking out of the sand. What is evident from other pictures is that shell sand, blown onshore, is very much a feature of this relatively recent landscape – I look forward to hearing, eventually, just how they formed.

Back to Perth for an evening in the splendidly named The Good Life B&B in Perth Hills, near to the airport – we had an early start the next morning to catch a plane to Melbourne. Cherry did us proud, stocking the fridge and cupboards so well that we abandoned our plans to go out for a meal.

On the Thursday morning then (the 19th) we returned the car, caught the plane and arrived in a hot Melbourne to be greeted by Peter, Shells, Ewan and Maggie.

A slideshow, at reduced resolution giving a flavour of the week can be seen below …

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Railway spaghetti

It started as a casual comment on a walk with Joe Nicholls as we crossed the Taff by a new bridge we’d seen on a previous walk – “I wonder whether that linked the Coryton line to Radyr?”. I was pretty sure it didn’t but it set in train a really stimulating return to my geographical roots, another walk, and the discovery of maps I’d forgotten I possessed.

A lot of the conversation that took place whilst I undertook my investigations were shared online with Simon Wood who I knew had a great deal of interest in the railway network past and present. So, quite a few links to those exchanges on Google+ – now sadly demised!

It all started  from a comment about “that bridge” which prompted me to look for maps. I found that I had a number of maps including an OS Seventh Series 1″ Map from 1961, a 1:10,000 Cardiff City Map and 1:7,500 Cardiff Photomap all of which showed an extent of sidings on the Radyr side of the bridge and a reference to Tin works.

Cardiff OS Map 1961

These clearly shows the evidence of a large marshalling yard on the floodplain and that the bridge serviced that yard to allow traffic to rejoin the Taff Vale line down to Queen Street and the junction at Mynachdy across to the Roath Docks (along the line of the current Eastern Avenue, past the University Hospital of Wales). [NB I remember, vaguely, this still being in place when I went to school in Cardiff in the 1960’s; I certainly remember this line passing under the road on Pen-y-lan Hill as I cycled to school.]

So one mystery was solved. This bridge didn’t link Coryton to Radyr – in fact if I’d read this earlier, I’d have known that to have been impossible; anyway, the angle of the bridge and the distance downstream should have made that determination much easier. But it got to me thinking about the Coryton Line, and where it went and how it fitted into the railway history of South Wales. I quickly found this excellent history of the Taff Vale Railway, so I didn’t have much to research. There was a rather faint map of the company’s network, so I looked for others, and found these of the area around Taffs Well.

It was now getting interesting. the OS map (from 1961) showed the Coryton line extending to a disused station at Tongwynlais and then extending up the valley passing under another line before going up the valley on the opposite side of the Taff from the present line (the Taff Vale Railway). It was time for more map work! The map on the left (above), to the bottom left-hand side clearly identifies the other tracks as belonging to the Barry (Llantrisant Junction) and Rhymney Railway companies. The Barry line going high and crossing the Taff on a viaduct; the Rhymney staying low and eventually joining the Taff Vale line just north of Radyr. Now I was getting somewhere, and these historic maps (below) showed exactly what was happening.

It’s amazing to think that in the small space that was the natural gap in the southern edge of the South Wales coalfield at Taffs Well and Nantgarw there were four parallel railway lines. All linked to coal and dock companies, competing fiercely for business. I refer you again to D.S.M. Barrie’s excellent history of the Taff Vale Railway, which includes references and links to all its competitors.

I wanted to investigate on the ground these tracks as they pass through Taffs Well and then diverge at Nantgarw, two of them passing over the divide to Caerphilly – so a walk was required.

[NB This is the first map I have produced using GPX files with the new OS DataHub Map Plugin and the Free Premium Subscription.]

What you might observe from the map is the track that leads up the A470 and then off to Rhydyfelin. This was to be the last stage of my investigation. I wanted to track down where the Coryton line would have joined the Taff Vale Railway. I’d already worked out that it was near to Treforest at Rhydyfelin and that the trackbed for the railway had been the basis of the A470 dual-carriageway built in the 1970’s – so a site visit was in order. I particularly wanted to find the site of this bridge, which I have read was only used once for through traffic from the Taff Vale to the Cardiff Railway – the so-called skew bridge. You can also, if you’re interested, read more about the Cardiff Railway Company from this account, I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the author to credit.

This I did which you can see from the picture above it. You can also see the record of my walk and the pictures I took, and where I took them from this album, the photos have captions and their locations are mapped.

Addendum: The Roath Branch of the TVR was constructed between 1886 and 1901. A series of maps show its route. First a map of the Wedal Road area in 1886 shows that it had yet to be built. Then a series of maps in 1891 show the Gabalfa area; the Roath area (with the newly opened Roath Park Lake); the  area; and the East Moors area where the line went into the Docks. These maps are taken from the NLS collection, 6″ Series, Ordnance Survey. [2nd July 2016]