More annoying council stupidity

I will the first to admit that I am not Bob the Builder. I'll never star in a home renovation show. Give me a shovel and ask me to level a bit of ground and I'll give you a pockmarked, lumpy, sloping mess.

That being said, I must now tell you that I did not build the pedestrian path around the northern section of the Bay. The track around the Bay is controlled by 3 or 4 councils, and each council has done their bit differently. That's federalism in action for you - a vibrant stew pot of ideas.

Except that some of those ideas are crackingly bloody stupid. One council decided to construct the walking path out of gravel. That's not a bad idea, as one would think that it would drain better than tarmac and be kinder to knee joints - especially creaky old knee joints like mine.

However, if you want to completely screw a task, just give it to local government. The gravel path doesn't drain at all, especially since the constructors built it like a canal. You have two lovely straight cement edges with a concave depression in the middle. The gravel is also very fine, so it has compacted down like concrete. After a bit of rain, all the water runs off into the "canal", and it stays there for days. I think it rained last on Friday. This photo was taken on Sunday afternoon.

Clearly, the council has really been aiming to solve the water crisis by providing local storage for rainwater runoff. Why bother with installing a tank in the backyard when there are thousands of gallons of water sitting in a canal running right around the Bay?

This of course explains why a lot of pedestrians end up on the cyclepath. Someone is going to have to go around with a tip truck full of gravel and a shovel and raise the path and make it convex so that water runs off, not into it.

Bet it won't happen in my lifetime.