NEWS
Barry the Butt ... look, we got to know him so well over many weeks that we gave him a name, okay! – finally disappeared from the dirty Walton’s walkthrough to Valley Metro as our 3 August issue was due to hit the streets.
We at The Independent are still not sure who did the right thing and gave the 10-metre stretch of public walkway the much-needed sweepout that claimed Barry – but a big thank-you to whoever did it!
Sure, they didn’t mop out the food stains and other horrible-looking smears but at least the trash and balls of fur, dirt and other detrius did disppear, along with the butt of recent Indie jokes.
Barry’s close neighbour, Bertha the half-eaten hamburger bun, was a close companion to Barry for almost as long as Barry held court in the area. The two pieces of bun disappeared some days before Barry himself went up in smoke, so to speak. We’re kind of hoping it was rats that took Bertha away, rather than some homeless and hungry person.
Bertha’s wrapping, along with other general rubbish, went in the general broom-through that took Barry from us.
Then, for a few weeks there, we thought Barry had made a return. A butt that looked suspiciously like Barry took up residence in a different part of the walkway – in another crevice where a tile had broked up and been removed.
That butt lasted a few days but disappeared before we could take a pix of him abd collect a DNA sample that could have proved any family connection.
But The Indie’s prediction that the big pile of broken tiles that had graced a corner of the walkway for many weeks before disappearing some days before that general cleanup would soon be replaced has proven spot on. Other shoddily replaced tiles that have broken up under pedestrain traffic now make up three little piles of broken tiles. No-one seems to want to remove them. As usual, no one cares.
The lighting is still poor, with a number of tubes broken. The aforementioned food stains still blight the area. As we’ve mentioned before, whoever is responsible for this state of affairs obviously could not care less about the Valley or how it looks.
The owners should be thorougly ashamed of themselves but we suspect they couldn’t give a toss.
Above: The ALP’s Lord Mayoral candidate Ray Smith and the party’s candidate for Central Ward Paul Crowther were taken by The Independent on a guided tour of the Walton’s walkthrough some weeks ago and were introduced to Barry the Butt.
