What are these?

I have seen them in scrub away from roads and I am sure I remember about 30 years ago seeing a broken one containing some sort of device with a pointer and cylinder like an earthquake recorder (but I don’t expect it would be one…) I thought thermometer at the time.

tim_c said :

They’re traffic detectors that are usually placed on major roads on the approach to traffic light controlled intersections – they detect traffic approaching the intersection to make sure that the traffic lights don’t change to green for the single car waiting on the side street until there is a substantial number of cars approaching along the major road.

That may be true for some, but most that I see are not even close to traffic lights. For example there is one beside Ashely drive near the Erindale Drive roundabout.

I’ve often wondered as I pass the one on Coulter Drive, near Joynton-Smith… good question…

Clive Palmer has had these boxes installed. Each one contains a number of sausage rolls, permanently kept warm, in case Mr Palmer is ever twenty metres from lunch.

He has had them deliberately aged by people who make fake antiques, lest they are broken into by hungry hoi polloi.

They’re traffic detectors that are usually placed on major roads on the approach to traffic light controlled intersections – they detect traffic approaching the intersection to make sure that the traffic lights don’t change to green for the single car waiting on the side street until there is a substantial number of cars approaching along the major road.

Paul0075 said :

Old traffic counter boxes. I think they’re long out of use, considering how munted some of them are nowadays. It’s surprising that they haven’t been removed though.

This appears to be correct.

When I reported a malfunctioning traffic light a while ago, I took the opportunity to ask about those boxes and also got the above explanation.

Grail said :

Test new traffic counting boxes. You will notice that they are adjacent to roads, and near the box will be the telltale signs of a metal detecting loop. The idea is that the “cheap and unlikely to be stolen” stuff is the loop of wire in the road and the metal box to hold the counter, while the counter is removable and expensive. So the box will be empty except when the NCDC is counting traffic to gauge traffic flows and thus whether any further works are required to modify usage of a particular road.

These boxes are nothing to do with a secret ASIO plan where RFID tags are attached to cars so the government can track you at all times.

Nothing new about these. NCDC also long gone.

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Roundhead89 said :

That is an Australia Post run box. Workers at the post office pre-sort mail and deliver it to the boxes. Your postie then gets the mail from the box and delivers it to your mail box without having to sort it on the bike.

Not Auspost run boxes. They are usually in the scrub, this one off Sulwood Dr. Further, the box is only about a 300 mm cube.

Roundhead89 said :

That is an Australia Post run box. Workers at the post office pre-sort mail and deliver it to the boxes. Your postie then gets the mail from the box and delivers it to your mail box without having to sort it on the bike.

That would be these: http://region.com.au/images-of-canberra-the-shiny-ones-the-obsolete-one/30905

What’s pictured above is too small for even a DL envelope.

That is an Australia Post run box. Workers at the post office pre-sort mail and deliver it to the boxes. Your postie then gets the mail from the box and delivers it to your mail box without having to sort it on the bike.

Malcolm Turnbull’s broadband solution has arrived.