u/SteveJohnson2010

You’ll now need to pay $155 per year to earn Qantas points on your Westpac Black card, up from $75 now!

>Hidden behind hoarding, there is good reason why a giant hole located a short stroll from Sydney’s largest stadium at Olympic Park is the size it is.

>About 200 metres long and 37 metres wide, the hole has been dug to fit four platforms side by side in an underground station at Olympic Park for the $29 billion Metro West line between Westmead and the CBD.

>It will make it the only one of 46 stations on Sydney’s rapidly expanding metro network to have four platforms. The others each have only two platforms.

>The reason is simple: the four platforms at the new Olympic Park station – one either side of the two tracks – will be built to handle tens of thousands of sports fans and concertgoers quickly converging on it from Accor Stadium or other large venues nearby.

>Like the nearby heavy rail station at Olympic Park, those arriving by driverless train at the new Metro West station will exit off one platform while those waiting to board will do so from another platform about 10 seconds later.

>That will be repeated for east and westbound driverless trains during “event mode”. During standard operations, only two platforms will operate like those stations on the rest of Sydney’s metro lines.

>For those heading west, a train to Parramatta will take five minutes. For those travelling east, a trip from Olympic Park to Hunter Street in the CBD will be 15 minutes. That compares to about 40 minutes on double-deck trains to Wynyard station from Olympic Park.

>From its opening in 2032, the metro station at Olympic Park will be capable of clearing queues of more than 26,000 passengers within 70 minutes of a major event finishing. In comparison, the heavy rail station nearby can move up to 40,000 people per hour.

>Sydney Metro line-wide delivery director Luke Garden said Olympic Park station was designed for “surges of people” leaving events..

>“That’s why it is so much bigger – it needs to take that capacity,” he said.

>“At Olympic Park, you just get this surge of people coming, so you really need to control those surges, and you do that inside the station.”

>At present, up to 50 per cent of people travel on trains to get to and from Olympic Park during special events.

>Garden said the new Olympic Park station would feel “significantly bigger” for passengers than other metro stations because of its configuration to deal with large crowds. The 37-metre wide hole dug for it – referred to as the station box – is almost twice the width of that for other stations..

>“A big part of this is going to be about crowd management,” he said.

>“The event mode of the station will handle them and hold them in different positions so that we don’t get too much surge loading inside the station.”

>At other stations, it was “more about keeping the flow constant” during peaks.

>About 80 Olympic swimming pools would fit inside the hole dug at Olympic Park station, compared to 40 for a standard station box such as at Parramatta, Burwood, North Strathfield and the Bays near Rozelle.

>After tunnelling finished early this year, the Metro West project is now entering the fit-out stage.

>The Bays station near White Bay Power Station will be the first to undergo early construction work within the next two months, followed by North Strathfield and Burwood North.

>The final construction contracts for Olympic Park, Parramatta and Pyrmont stations are expected to be awarded by the end of the year. Early designs included more than 20 escalators for the new Olympic Park station to cope with the passenger forecasts.

>Premier Chris Minns said the Metro West line would transform the way people move between Parramatta and the city, while re-zonings around its stations such as at Olympic Park and the Bays would deliver tens of thousands of new homes.“

>This line will open connections between parts of the city like never before, creating new destinations across the city and revitalising suburbs,” he said.

>Work has started craning more than 5300 tonnes of rail down 27 metres into the giant hole at Olympic Park.

>Once at the bottom, the rail sections are welded into more than 100-metre-long segments before each is wheeled to different positions along the twin tunnels. They will later be fitted to concrete sleepers to form the tracks for the 24-kilometre line.

>John Holland project director Andrew Knispel said it would take until 2029 to complete installation of the rail tracks due to challenges accessing parts of the project while other work was under way.

>All up, 60 kilometres of track will be installed within the tunnels and at a stabling and maintenance facility for the 16-strong fleet of Metro West trains near Rosehill racecourse.

If you didn’t grow up in the 60s, it’s hard to explain and appreciate the impact of The Samurai on the schoolkids of the day. This black and white Japanese action series about Shintaro the Samurai (usually with his Ninja offsider) mixed swordplay with Ninja spycraft, and somehow and for some reason it became an absolute hit with Aussie school kids.

I think part of it was because it was like nothing we had ever seen before, and it was a welcome antidote to the endless American westerns. It was also very easy for Aussie kids to cosplay, all you needed was a dressing gown and a stick 😂

I also like to tell myself that this introduction to a foreign culture, specifically Japan, played its own small part in helping broaden the minds and the outlook of kids in those days.

Anyway, the YouTube video linked is a fascinating look at the story behind the story, including when the actor who played Shintaro visited Australia and received a rockstar welcome!

More than 1800 former Qantas workers who were unlawfully sacked by the airline more than five years ago face an even longer wait to receive the $160 million they are owed after the law firm managing the process flagged it would ask the court for more time.

Maurice Blackburn has notified the affected workers that it will seek to push back a key milestone in the process from Federal Court Justice Michael Lee’s deadline of July 31 to at least October this year.

That means the workers, who have previously told this masthead about battling with periods of unemployment and trauma from their sacking, will have waited almost six years since the layoffs were announced for their full compensation.

In an email sent to the workers last week, Maurice Blackburn said it needed more time to work out how much individual workers were owed from a $120 million pool of compensation and would ask the Federal Court for more time at a hearing on Wednesday.

“As we continue to finalise the scheme, final amounts to be paid to each [of the] affected workers have not been finalised, and Maurice Blackburn is not yet able to provide the list,” reads the email, seen by this masthead.

In addition to the $120 million in compensation the workers are entitled to, Justice Michael Lee in August 2025 imposed a $90 million penalty on Qantas. He found the company was motivated in part by trying to prevent the workers from exercising their lawful right to take industrial action to bargain for higher wages. Qantas fought the case, which was first filed in 2020, all the way to the High Court, delaying the payouts for years. It eventually apologised in what Lee suggested was a half-hearted manner.

The workers’ union, the Transport Workers Union, which funded the case, will get $50 million of that penalty, while $40 million will go to the affected ex-employees. Lee had ordered the $40 million to be paid by July, but the Federal Court first needs to know how much each individual employee gets under the $120 million compensation scheme being managed by Maurice Blackburn to apportion the smaller sum.

The nearly 2000 former Qantas workers, mostly ground crew, baggage handlers and cleaners, were ultimately made redundant in 2021 under chief executive Alan Joyce’s leadership, though he did not personally make the decision. Under the court-approved process, economic and non-economic losses are being calculated separately. The collection of economic loss data is complete, but payment won’t occur until the non-economic loss assessment is completed as well.

Brisbane-based Tony Mora, who had worked as a truck driver and cabin cleaner, said the news from Maurice Blackburn was “the latest jab in the heart”.

“I’m so frustrated now and disheartened because here we are, not only me, but a lot of people were going to get payments this week.”

“I’ve spoken to a few people who have planned stuff, organised stuff, taking out loans, everything to, to coincide with these payments coming through and now they’re not coming.”

A separate ex-employee Ryan, who asked that his last name be withheld, has made a complaint to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner about Maurice Blackburn’s handling of the compensation.

“While Maurice Blackburn claim that this process is being completed with attention to detail in order to ensure each individual is compensated fairly since everyone’s situation is different, the fact of the matter is that the catalyst which put each individual in their varied positions is identical for everyone.”

I think these are actually the first interviews he has done since leaving Qantas a few years ago. There’s a story on 60 Minutes tonight, a very good interview and review of the book in The Australian, and no doubt more to follow.

Yesterday QR announced a MEL-AKL tag, and today they’re adding BNE-AKL too!

It’s pleasing that of the five men profiled in this article, two of them don’t have kids. I was happy to see that acknowledgement in the mainstream media that kids are not for everybody.

I’ve decided to replace the crappy built-in wardrobe in my spare room with a PAX system.

It looks pretty straightforward: measure the space of the existing wardrobe, choose the right mix of PAX components, rip out the old wardrobe and install the PAX.

But before I embark on this project, I thought I should ask if anybody who has gone with a PAX solution might have any advice to pass on, in terms of things they learnt afterwards which didn’t occur to them at first, or practical tips or any other PAX advice?

Thanks in advance!!

Maybe more Australians will also start waking up to the benefits of not having kids.

After scanning my groceries through the self-serve checkout at the local Woollies, I always used to be able to just tap my iPhone onto the payment terminal and it would automatically recognise my Everyday Rewards card in the Wallet (via NFC) and add this to the system. But lately I have to manually open the wallet and select my ER card. Has anybody else experienced this change?