Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
I've posted an earlier version of the Birdcage Tavern last year before it was pushed up the road on 3 enormous concrete rails.
The old hotel was moved to allow a 'cut and cover' motorway tunnel to be constructed underneath. One of our oldest pubs (1884), it was once situated very close to the Freemans Bay waterfront, but with land reclamation early last century the beach moved away and today the motorway has moved in with the older overhead viaduct joined by a motorway tunnel beneath.
The Birdcage Tavern will be shunted back down to it's original position, about 40 metres to the left. This is the view from Franklin road toward the city. By the end of Tuesday, the pub should be back in it's rightful position roughly where the digger is sitting in this picture.
Viewed from under viaduct July, 2010 and a shot of one of the rails...
The old hotel was moved to allow a 'cut and cover' motorway tunnel to be constructed underneath. One of our oldest pubs (1884), it was once situated very close to the Freemans Bay waterfront, but with land reclamation early last century the beach moved away and today the motorway has moved in with the older overhead viaduct joined by a motorway tunnel beneath.
The Birdcage Tavern will be shunted back down to it's original position, about 40 metres to the left. This is the view from Franklin road toward the city. By the end of Tuesday, the pub should be back in it's rightful position roughly where the digger is sitting in this picture.
Viewed from under viaduct July, 2010 and a shot of one of the rails...
Comments
I lived in Herne Bay in the 60s and have fond memories of this (and one or two other pubs!)
Nice to see an old place being kept, rather than demolished.