A Man and his Penguin

I got some physical spam in my letterbox today from the PMH foundation. I only opened it to check what weekend the Big Walk was going to be on this year. Still the same weekend as the Rottnest Marathon, which is dumb because there are a lot of people who would do the walk if it was a week earlier or later.

I had a quick glance at the ad, and to my horror it’s now a "new route" around the bridges from Burswood!

I’m going to speak my mind here and sorry if this offends anybody.

Changing the route away from Perth -> Fremantle is the most ignorant thing that’s ever been done in this event! It is tradition that the walk goes from Perth to Fremantle, full-stop. You don’t break with tradition. Anybody who has done the walk a few times would keep the route the way it is - what can compare with the excitement of walking over the Fremantle traffic bridge? What about the bragging rights you get after the event - "Yesterday I walked to Fremantle!". There’s even a certain indescribable feeling you get just after you go under the Narrows, knowing that you just need to keep walking in this direction for another 3 hours. You end off feeling that you’ve accomplished a great journey. With the new route, you end off where you started. FAIL.

Also, there’s a hell of a lot more to do in Fremantle after the walk than bloody Burswood. Families make a big day of it - do the walk then go to the markets and have lunch. What will they do now - go play the pokies afterwards? What about the Freo businesses that have their busiest day of the year on Big Walk day?

More issues: It’s easy to catch a train to the Perth Esplanade, get off, and you’re right at the start line. There is a train station at Burswood, but you could get lost finding your way from Burswood Station to the start line. It’s also on the Armadale line, which is Perth’s most dangerous line for commuters AND is often closed for trackworks.

Come on. Admit it, nobody thought this through. Nobody involved in the decision has done the walk more than once. I might do the walk this year, but I’m so disappointed because I loved the Big Walk, and now it’s been completely ruined.

If you’ve got any brains, at the end of the event this year you’ll realise that attendence was down and that the walk doesn’t have the same feel now; and you’ll change it back. You have to, otherwise you will have destroyed a Perth institution.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 5:17 am and is filed under Backstory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.