Tram Challenge #19. Flinders Street to North Coburg

It is convenient when the tram challenge runs across somewhere that I actually need to go.

Not that I needed to go to North Coburg, but I did want to go to Barkly Square in Brunswick. I had ordered something to be picked up from the Kmart there. the easiest way to get there by public transport from my place is a tram into the city, then a route 19 along Sydney Road. I decided to do the entire route so I could add it to my tally.

I spent a lot of my young adulthood in and around Carlton, Parkville, Brunswick, Fitzroy, so the route is familiar to me.  I worked for a time in the Coburg library and occasionally in the Brunswick library. Freyja and Simon have lived around some of the bits of Brunswick that the tram passes by. It was fun. It was also a nice day for a random tram ride. I don't recall having taken the tram right to the end of the line before.

I am surprised on some of the routes by how little there is at the end of the line. What made anyone think to carry the tram line out to North Coburg? There is very little there. I would have thought a more natural terminating point would have been Bell Street. Which only goes to show how fortunate it is that I am not a town planner in charge of designing tram routes!

From the junction of Elizabeth
and Finders Streets

to Bakers Road, North Coburg

Back on the tram, heading back into the city.
It filled up as we reached Coburg and Brunswick

There wasn't much else at the terminus

I haven't been to Barkly Square for a very, very long time. I used to go there when I lived in Garton Street  and then in Pigdon Street in North Carlton. It has grown substantially since then. It is, in fact, a proper shopping complex with a large Kmart and a Coles and a Woolworths right next to each other. 

I am hoping to get a number of the tram routes covered this year. Public transport in Victoria will remain free until the end of May and then will be half price until the end of the year, which will cap my daily travel at $3. Mind you, it's only $6 at full (seniors') price. But free and a daily cap of $3 is even better