Flemington Drains

Some guys at this skatepark I was at on friday told me about a ditch called the Flemington Drains, and told me I'd probably recognize it from lots of videos. They told me what train stop to get off at and I was able to find it from there. Basically the place is huge, and full of banks. The addition of the wooden ramp isn't all that skateable, and I'm guessing it was a bikers addition. BMX is big in Australia, probably because they're allowed to use skateparks. In some ways, the expanse of the place, and numerous banks make for immense amounts of possibilities, but at the same time a lot of it is the same kind of stuff, banks.



The layout of this post is kind of messed up, this blog service isn't really good at all for posting pictures. I barely have any control over the layout. Also, I have to pay by the bandwith used for the internet in my apartment, so I can't upload a ton of photos, although I guess I could lower the quality. If you click on the images you should get a much larger image with a lot of detail, which probably explains the reason it took over ten minutes for all these to upload.

You also have to watch out your board doesn't go in the little river. Someone built a little bridge, and by built, I mean they placed a plank across it. Different obstacles are on different sides of it, but when I put one foot on the plank, it bent down considerably, and my guess is either little kids put it there and used it since they don't weigh very much, or little kids put it there as a booby trap. Maybe it could have supported me, but I chose to just jump the five feet across. I guess ollieing over it would have been cooler, but I didn't want to risk my board taking a dunk in the urban creek.

The photos don't even show everything here. There was a demo here on Saturday, but I skipped going. At the Fitzroy bowl one of the locals told me he showed up just as it finished, but it was apparently Chima Ferguson as the star attraction. I would have also been interested to see how many boards went in the sludge water.
I hope these pictures can offer some visual attraction to the non-skaters, as I'm sure this update isn't quite as interesting, but to be truthful, skating was a big factor in choosing to come to Oz. Don't worry though, old victorian houses and cute Europeanesque street scenes will be coming soon, as well as cool gothic looking churches. The provost house at the Uni reminds me of Robyns Sandwiches (RIP), but more like a church than a witches hut.