The Wheel of Misfortune will spin over Docklands again, and I'm excited
The story spoke (sorry, can't resist) to me. But what did I feel, exactly? A mix of disbelief, doubt, disdain, maybe even dread? A lot of D words, which is appropriate given the oversized role the attraction (or distraction) plays in the life of Docklands.
The $100 million wheel opened in 2008, was shut down 40 days later when structural flaws were detected, reopened after extensive and expensive repairs (practically a rebuild) in 2013, and closed again in 2021, a victim of COVID and lack of interest.
You might say the wheel is symptomatic of Docklands itself. It should work, but it doesn't.
But for all that, one D word I don't apply to the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel – or M-SOW, as I prefer to think of it – is disaster.
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Unlike most Melburnians, I have been on the wheel. I was gifted a spin with my family for a birthday some years ago. It was winter, it was night, the sky was clear, and we could see for miles: shipping containers as far as the eye could see in one direction; suburban sprawl to the Dandenongs in another; the stretch of the bay to Dromana to the south; the strange solitary highrise blip of the Broadmeadows Civic Plaza to the north. And, of course, the dense forest of towers of New Quay, the CBD and Southbank right up close.
People love to complain about the view, to insist the 120-metre-tall wheel is in the wrong spot, that it should be on the banks of the Yarra, at Birrarung Marr, perhaps, or by Polly Woodside, where its much smaller sibling, the 35-metre-high Skyline Melbourne, operates. But I'm not sure that I buy that.
What you see from M-SOW is Melbourne as it really is. A sprawl. A nice bay, with some lovely beaches. A cluster of hills in the distance, but not overly endowed with the geographical magnificence of Sydney, or the lush green and undulating topography of Brisbane.
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