WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE

I know I predicted it would be a white elephant. That they would never get close to their predicted one million plus visitors a year. And I sympathized with the poor schmuck traders lured to Docklands to supposedly make their fortunes in the shadow of this wondrous, world class tourist attraction.

And that was before it even opened.  I am talking about the Southern Star Observation Wheel which finally did open, months late, and then abruptly shut down after being damaged in this month’s heat wave.

Now we are told it won’t re-open for at least six months and there are even wild rumours that it won’t re-open at all.

All because temperatures in the mid-Forties buckled the giant tubular steel eyesore and according to the union’s structural division there are at least 12 cracks in one section of the wheel.

Maybe Premier John Brumby is, understandably, suffering from lack of sleep but his explanation for the industrial calamity was a doozy at a press conference yesterday.

He said he hadn’t been briefed on the condition of the wheel but structures like it were not built to cope with temperatures in the high 40 degrees.

Really? Tell that to the people who built and run the even bigger wheel in Singapore. And you’d better alert all those architects and industrial engineers putting up those mammoth structures in that notoriously cool spot called Dubai.

And don’t go up the Eiffel Tower on a hot summer’s day, as I did. It might melt.

The fact that a 21st century structure can be made unsafe and unusable is a scandal. Sections of the wheel were designed by the Japanese Neisho Corporation and Japanese engineers have been inspecting the 120-metre wheel now frozen on our skyline.

Presumably the owners ING Real Estate and the operators Southern Star Management group will stall have the structure under warrantee. But what will happen to the small businesses which opened in good faith in what is fast becoming a ghost town?

Seems to be that that couple photographed while copulating in one of the cabins obviously weren’t the only ones who got screwed.

Wednesday, Debruary 25, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009