Eastlink Tunnel = Mushroom Farm

Quote: "According to that morning's Herald Sun 49.8 per cent of all journeys to the city were by bicycle. One would have thought there would have been more than that, but you see, Australians are not all that keen on muscle power."

For those who came in late, back in the 1970's, Keith was first president of the Bicycle Institute of Victoria.


Herald Sun: The green dream by Keith Dunstan

IT is so easy to have nightmares. Mine have become worse particularly over the past few weeks. Take for example my dream last night. You know what dreams are like. It is hard to pick the hour and the date, but I suspect the time was 15 years from now.

Petrol was almost impossible to buy and if you could get it, the price was $299.99 a litre on the black market.

However the first thing that struck me was the peace. Melbourne was so quiet. I couldn't hear any trucks squealing their brakes, no Suzukis, Kawasakis or overpowered Hondas creating super decibels.

Then would you believe my neighbour over the road was cutting his lawn with a lovely old hand mower.

Then as I looked out an upstairs window there was no smog and the You Yangs were etched against the sky as if they were on the other side of the road. Some things surprised.

I thought the roads would be filled with electric cars, but you know how it is, nothing ever gets better, the price of electric power soared like petrol.

According to that morning's Herald Sun 49.8 per cent of all journeys to the city were by bicycle. One would have thought there would have been more than that, but you see, Australians are not all that keen on muscle power.

So there was an amazing return to the horse. General Motors, Toyota and Ford were quick to produce the finest vehicles.

I think I was most excited by the Commodore Landau. It was two-horse power, made of lightweight titanium and it had the most ingenious retractable hood for bad weather.

Although some preferred the four-horse Fairmont Barouche with mag wheels and spoiler on the back.

Parking in the city was much improved and the Kings Parkade deserved commendation for the splendid job they did converting their multi-storey car parks into stables.

The biggest problem was what to do with the freeways and tunnels. I mean, there was the huge tunnel linking the Eastern Freeway with the west of Melbourne and only completed in 2015. Cyclists didn't like it and horses went into a panic as soon as they entered.

But you can't beat Melburnian ingenuity. The horses produced more manure than you would believe and the tunnel was the ideal temperature.

So money was raised with a big float and the whole tunnel was turned into a mushroom farm and by 2020 Melbourne became the greatest exporter of mushrooms in the world.

The West Gate Bridge was trickier. The Brumby Government decided very early it had to be multi-level to carry extra traffic. By the time they were finished it cost $2.5 billion. Big mistake!

The traffic wasn't there any more. But here there was another lovely solution. Inspired by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the State Architect turned it into Melbourne's most popular mall with shops, restaurants, nightclubs and child-minding centres. It features now in every postcard that goes overseas.

But those huge freeways like the Eastern were much harder to solve. How do you go about digging up those hectares after hectares of paving?

We did try covering them with mod grass, very expensive. We put in bowling greens, tennis courts, skating rinks, special areas for Government protests, which became very popular, but even by the time of my nightmare huge areas were still available.

Come the final doom of petrol stocks there were 1.2 automobiles for every human in Australia, which made 28 million. What to do with them? Some were dumped into the centre of Port Phillip Bay to create a 100 metre high sculpture, which I assure you was amazing and everybody agreed this was the icon, the landmark that Melbourne always had been seeking.

Some kept cars in their back gardens as charming gazebos. Those with a lots of glass such as Ferraris and Maseratis when filled with water made ideal aquariums.

As for those monster four-wheel-drives, such as Patrols, Pajeros and Land Rovers, they were useful indeed, just right for turning into chook houses. But if you didn't want to keep chooks they made perfect tool sheds.

Now what other side effects did we have? My copy of the Herald Sun reported that in the first five months of the year there were 34 deaths on Victoria's roads, two more than the previous year, and down by 1000 from the 1960s.

Even so the police were worried they wanted to get our road deaths down to 20 a year.

Asthma in the community almost disappeared and according to new reports the hole in the ozone layer had almost gone and the climate was returning to normal.

True, the loss of jobs in the automobile industry was devastating for a while, but it was amazing how quickly we recovered. Blacksmiths and farriers thrived, the new carriage industry had been an excellent employer, horse studs were big business and all the second-hand horse show rooms along the Burwood Highway had to be seen to be believed.

Then, of course, horse-poo gathering became a major industry. Lovely for the gardens! Melbourne, once the garden city, was now the garden wonder of the world.

Keith Dunstan is a Melbourne-based writer and a former A Place In The Sun columnist.