Perth, Western Australia: Gosnells Parks and Railway Markets

Perth, Western Australia: Gosnells Parks and Railway Markets - Day 11

Fish Mural Art along the front of a garden box near the Agonis Centre Entrance

Gosnells City Council has always been supportive of the arts to the point where
you can see many examples of public art throughout the town centre.

Gosnells the suburb, or even the City of Gosnells, isn't really a destination at the forefront of anyone's mind when visiting Perth. Even now, after so much money has been spent on making pleasing community spaces and facilities, in the 24 years since I moved back to South Australia.

It's certainly a much more pleasant looking place to live now than it was during the years I grew up there, from the age of eight. My family moved there from South Australia (after a brief eight month stay in Kelmscott while we waited for our house in Gosnells to be built) at the beginning of 1978.

Today's plans were for my mum and I to catch up for lunch and do a bit of a walk around Gosnells - where she still lives - though not in the original house we had built, which was sold years ago.

Usually it's a chance for me to see what's changed since the last time I was there, but since it wasn't that long ago, relatively speaking, other than a new community park space, near the railway station, it looked mostly the same.

Dome Cafe

Mum and I walked to the Gosnells Dome Cafe, which is really quite nice inside, with full leather style armchair seats at some tables as well as proper booth seats and couches.

Mum shouted me lunch. We both had ham and cheese toasties with potato chips and tomato salsa dip, along with a cup of tea. I'd definitely recommend it. The food was nice and the dining area makes the whole experience feel more up market than the prices suggest.

The Agonis Centre
Clock Tower.

Agonis Centre

We then walked down to the Agonis centre, which is a bit of a landmark with its fairly modern looking clock tower. Inside, just in front of where the library - sorry, the Knowledge Centre - is, there is a permanent display giving a history of the area.

Then, out the back of the centre we made our way around, what is a kind of tree top walk, down to the playground, community stage/amphitheatre, and river board walk that is very nice for some light exercise or if you're into nature photography.

Tree top walk way that leads down to the playground behind the Agonis Centre.

Treetop walkway (along the back) that leads down to the playground and
parkland behind the Agonis Centre.

The Gosnells Railway Markets

From there Mum and I made our way back to the Gosnells Railway Market, passing through the new open space park, that wasn't there before, just in front of the railway station.

The Market seemed very empty for a Friday afternoon. Many shops inside were closed and there didn't seem to be much going on in the food hall. Unless the weekends are better I suspect the markets won't be open too many more years (or maybe it will?).

These Markets were actually opened a few years before I left Perth. Not sure of the exact year (1991 I think since that's when the train (image below) was placed inside)? The market did start off strong, with a busy food hall, fruit and veg market, and a good selection of variety stalls selling typical market type items, books, clothing, bric-a-brac etc.

Dd 596 Steam Locomotive inside the Gosnells Railway Market.

This Dd 596 Steam Locomotive sits between the food court and the main market area. It's
representative of the trains that used to travel the line through Gosnells up until 1968.

I think the hope was that they would help make Gosnells a weekend destination (since they are only open Thursday through Sunday). Unfortunately they never really attracted much more than the local market. I think they were hoping for something like The Fremantle Market, which I have never known not to be packed, and challenging just to walk around for the sheer number of shoppers.

As I said, Gosnells is not really a destination anyone thinks of when visiting Perth. Even people who live in the surrounding suburbs, I suspect, rarely ever make Gosnells a destination for a day out.

---o ---o--- o---

Anyway, that was day 11 of my trip to Perth. Mum and I went back to her place to relax with a cup of tea, before I headed off to visit my brother, who lives a suburb over in Maddington, for a couple of hours.

My partner, Enigma, spent the day with my Dad's partner, taking a trip out to Hillary's Boat Harbour, where there is a similar, but more successful market out on the jetty.

Comments

What a Future with Flying Cars Might Look Like

Jetsons Style Flying Car - Image by TET & Leonardo.ai Regular readers of this blog will know that flying cars have been a recurring subject over the years. I even collected all my posts into a book you can buy on Amazon Kindle called Where's My Flying Car? The development of a true flying car is a fanciful one, largely because we've yet to come up with anything that actually looks like a car that flies. Most serious projects that even make it to a prototype are either small planes that compact into something you might drive from your home to an airport (if they don't have any vertical landing and take off (VTOL) capability) but you wouldn't drive to you local supermarket for the weekly groceries run, or they're some kind of drone/helicopter configuration with so many propellers you'll worry about shredding pedestrians who get too close. The dream is something that looks exactly like a car but can drive on a road, or hover (kind of like Luke Skywalker's ...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart...

TET Artwork Diary: Cats, Goats, and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon, Number Six

Y ou wouldn't know it from this blog, where I reference it a handful of posts , but I am a big fan of the rebooted 2003 Battlestar Galactica Series . Which is how I come to be Facebook following the series most recognised Cylon, Six - well the actress who plays six anyway, Tricia Helfer . One thing you'll learn pretty quickly about Tricia is that she owns a lot of rescue cats - and that she's more at home being a farm/country girl, surrounding herself with animals than she is living in cities - though she definitely seems to drift between the two worlds with ease. Cats and Goats Tricia with Larry and Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's FB Video . However, this is a blog post about a cat and goats, specifically Trica's Goats, Larry and Earl, that currently live at the Farm of the Free . She posted a video of herself visiting them on her Facebook . Click the link for the full video. Cat at Farm of the Free with Tricia, Larry, & Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's F...

How to Transfer Any Line Art to Your Griptape - Easy Skateboard Griptape Art Tutorial

Dog Star Griptape Art by TET Griptape art is once again gaining popularity amongst modern skateboarders. For those of us who have tried to create our own griptape art, using paint pens, you'll know reproducing your design onto the grip, without making any mistakes is incredibly challenging. Mostly because you just have to go for it and draw the design freehand, with paint pens, directly onto the griptape. You can make the odd mistake here or there but if you get the proportions of the design completely wrong, it can be very difficult to fix. Often you just have to live with the mistake. To address the problem I've come up with an easy way anyone can transfer a line art design to their griptape, removing almost all the anxiety of getting the proportions wrong. In fact, you could do this with any line art design, even if you have no drawing skill at all. Watch the video below to see my technique in action and/or skip past the video where I highlight the basic steps to get your de...

Two night Stay Glenelg, South Australia - Glenelg Motel, Beach Front, Cafe Strip/Jetty Road, and Evening Temptation Twilight Cruise

The Glenelg Giant Wheel. T he Glenelg foreshore and Cafe/Shopping strip (Jetty Road) at the end of the tramline from Adelaide, South Australia is arguably one of the must visit tourist regions of the city. It particularly has a lot to offer families with, not just the beach, but quite a number of playgrounds and grassed reserves as well. My partner booked us a post weekend, two night (Sunday and Monday), getaway in Glenelg by way of some discount vouchers she secured as part of a promotion encouraging people to visit the region over the Summer. Glenelg Motel The recently refurbished rooms of the Glenelg Motel raise your expectations from what the exterior of the rooms themselves suggest, which is a very 1970's vibe of your standard motel with parking right outside your front door (and not much else). Our room was spacious, and the modern furnishings were easily to the standards of any hotel we've stayed in over the last few years. The rooms look very modern with everything you...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog