Struth Part 1: Parking in North Sydney

[I am in the process of updating my website. I have not touched it in about 3 years. I used to have a mini-blog on the site, but moved to blogger when maintaining it became too irksome. In order to preserve for eternity my loving commentary, I've decided to replicate what I had previously written here on my blog, before blowing away the original. This is the first one, and was written in the Sep/Oct 2004 timeframe.]

OK, we all know how hard it is to find a parking spot in North Sydney. Well, those of us who work there do. But I live here. We live in a three-bedroom unit that has one allocated parking space. But North Sydney Council will not allow me a Resident's Parking Permit because we already have our one allocated space which my girlfriend uses for her four-times-more-expensive car. So I find a free 24×7 space in an adjacent street and park my car there during the week when I'm not using it. Saturday morning 7 August 2004 I went to my car to find a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper, dated the previous day. Sometime between Sunday 1st and Saturday 7th, they've changed the area I parked in from a 24×7 space to a 2-hour only space.

I don't want to read conspiracy in this too much, but it's the Council who approves building applications with inadequate car-parking for the occupants, Council which decides the rules for allocation of parking permits, Council which changes the zoning of existing parking without notifying residents, and Council which takes the revenue from parking fines generated in the re-zoned parking spots.

Very, very annoying. And costly.