A Tribute to Italian Culture

Indeed - we appear to have moved into a suburb that is a tribute to Italian culture. Oh really you say? So Springfield Lakes is dotted with Tuscan villas? Pehraps dominated by a cathedral to rival Florence? No wait - the hint is in the name - with all the lakes around the place you can navigate from place to place on a Venetian gondola? Er... not really.

No, what I am referring to is that that a road map of the suburb really resembles an aerial view of a bowl of spaghetti. The twist and tangle of streets is really quite amazing. This is probably best illustrated by describing how to find our house - turn left at the entry roundabout, then right at the lake roundabout and right at the supermarket roundabout. Up the hill, swing left then turn right and follow the road to the right around the park. Go around to the left then turn right at the hilltop roundabout. then right at the second entrance of our street. That description makes light of the various traffic furniture that complicates the route. Of course, you don't need to go that way - you can go straight on at the supermarket, past the school then turn right, and then left. That gets you back onto the hilltop road, so swing right, back to the left, and then turn right at the hilltop roundabout and right into our street. Or any number of other ways - the options are open at that point.

What there are not options about is how to get out of the suburb back into "normal Brisbane". There is only one way in and one way out of the actual suburb, which is to drive past the Delfin office nestled beside the lake at the north west tip of the suburb. There is a second entrance to the suburb under construction, although I use the term with a wistful smile. To be realistic, I have seen little effort being put into developing this road, and it looks exactly like it did when we first drove into the area last November. This road would help us a lot - it would dramatically shorten and simplify the route to Orion Shopping Centre - in theory less than a kilometre from our place but in practice several times more than that away. It would also enable us to describe a route into the our house that involves only 4 turns instead of the current 6 or 7 (depends how you count). If we happen to see the road built before we move out, I would be very surprised.

Suffice to say, Springfield Lakes is sufficiently spaghetti-like that so far none of our visitors have managed to make it in without getting lost. That is despite the fact that they always bring a map and think they know what they are doing before they get there. One of our visitors spent 30 minutes trying to find the place!

Once I realised how bad it was, I became quite concerned about how our furniture truck was going to make it into the district. It was a very large semi-trailer able to hold 120 cubit metres of goods. In fact they did extremely well! They drove in the day before in another vehicle, getting lost in the process, and planned their assault carefully. On the day, they arrived early, took a circuitous route through the suburb to avoid needing to turn right at any of the tight roundabouts - closed down the road to other traffic for a few minutes while they negotiated on particularly tight corner, and then when they reached our street, they drove past the corner and reversed the big semi around the corner in a surprisingly elegant 9-point turn, and then down the hill to our place so they could get out again afterwards. It made surprisingly good theatre!

But this does have a serious side. Significant concern is now being raised about whether the fire brigade and ambulance would be able to find their way into a particular location in a hurry in the case of an emergency. GPS helps, but there are certain points where vehicles larger than the average car struggle to get around, and these are not shown as problems on most maps or GPS units. The tabloids scream - "will someone die thanks to these streets?" While a little dramatic - we are left to wonder how serious the problem is and hope we never find out.

Oh, ok. Seeing I am blogging and it is meant to be a personal diary containing confessions and the like - I guess I should add - despite all of the above, I kind of like the idea of knowing my way around such a complex suburb, and personally it is kind of fun! And I've always liked spaghetti anyway! And it is also kind of fun hearing the stories come out about how various visitors have toured half of south-east Queensland trying to find us...