One of the things that really annoys me about Sydney is that the people here whine and moan about aircraft noise so much. Though I must admit that it has died down a lot in recent years. I know that in Melbourne people used to complain about road noise from freeways, but not to the same extent. So when looking at a house in Marrickville, the old noise issue raised it’s head again. The level of hysteria was so high that there even is a quarterly report on the issue. I know that when I used to stay with friends in Petersham, before I lived here, we used to have trouble hearing the TV as the aeroplanes flew over.
But I am not annoyed by this type of noise.
-
I used to live on Pascoe Vale Road in Oak Park. We have about half the trucks on the Sydney Melbourne run driving past the front of our house. The only time the noise annoyed me was on New Years day when there was none. The truck noise here was as bad as the aircraft noise in Petersham, but there was an added risk. Two semi’s rolled outside the front of our house. As a result I know one man died and another ended up driving through the brick wall into the front of our house.
-
My sister, when she lived in Seymour, used to live next to the railway line. The Melbourne Sydney freight trains used to run past at all hours of the night. The rattling of the house used to wake me up, rather than the noise. Also they used to shunt the local trains in the early hours of the morning as it was a major rail junction.
I think that there is just a political imperative to complain about something. So in Sydney the worst was the aircraft noise, and in Melbourne, on account of better planning for the airport, it was road noise. For some reason people never seem to complain about train noise.