Built to last.

Martin Place has become the focus of worldwide attention through the siege of the cafe and the tragic killing of two hostages by a Muslim man who carried deep bitterness towards the Australian authorities particularly the armed forces. Recent Australian engagement in Iraq seems to have been a tipping point in his internal rage spilling out in taking over the cafe and holding the patrons hostage. It is of course a chilling reminder of the power of religious brotherhood where what would normally be simply a cause of discontent about foreign policy becomes "personal" because of the linking and bondage gained through the boarder free, nationality blind over arching relationship which a shared faith can, in extreme cases bring.
The name Martin Place brought back memories of the early 60s when I remember the place as an outpost of Colonial architecture, an outpost I had seen all over the world, a remnant of Empire.
London, Cape Town, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Auckland, all had this signature of past glory, buildings of a style and a construction meant to last. Whilst the Empire crumbled the buildings remain a memorial to a period much, like the remnants of the Roman Empire, to remind us of a period when man's vision was of a different set of values, one of them, the permanence of the buildings to house the administration of government from a distant island. They reflected the strength and the assumed perpetuity of their guidance in the quality and the strength of these buildings.
Another feature of Empire and Colonialism was the symbolic dockside cranes standing like awkward pelicans, beckons awaiting the arrival of the next ship. They were built to a set design and standard even down to the grey paint and constructed in a factory in Birkenhead or somewhere on the Clyde. Powered by reliable Compton Parkinson electric motors they lined the London docks much as they did across the world, a symbol of mechanised continuity.
We have travelled a long road since those days and it's been largely a sorry story of ineptitude and would have made our leaders and our industrialists of yesteryear wince !