Anzac Day
Well it is 8.30 am and although I threatened to wake Meagan at 5.00 am so that we could attend the ANZAC dawn service she is asleep in the bed next to mine and I have just got up myself. How’s that? A late sleep in. Fairly amazing when you can call 8.30 a late sleep in. The trip down from Katoomba was fairly straight forward although the car was certainly working hard to pull the trailer with all Margo’s worldly goods. The car is going to feel like it is supercharged on the way back without all that weight.
The countryside west of the divide was all dry and brown. A bit sad really. Some of the grazing paddocks were little more than dust. However, as soon as we started to head east from Seymour in Victoria everything started to green up. I’ve never come into Melbourne this way. It is a little bit out of the way but it is some of the nicest countryside I have seen. None of the farms would be particularly commercially viable and therefore fit into the ‘hobby farm’ category yet the countryside of small rolling hills seems to close in on the farms and create cosy little farm residences probably for weekend warriors from Melbourne.
Travelling over the range and approaching the rural outskirts of Melbourne we arrive at our missions end, to deliver Margo’s gear. She has moved just outside of the town of Hurstbridge. The countryside and location out here is fairly unique. Coming into Melbourne through the backdoor as it were it is hard to believe that Hurstbridge is just 30 something K’s from Melbourne. You could easily live rural here and work in the city without any problems. The train goes directly to Hurstbridge with people living within the gum trees, kangaroos, koala’s and other wildlife just minutes from the township. Being an Aussie I usually don’t get too excited about kangaroos yet I haven’t seen quite so many as I have down here and they are all the larger, rarer, grey kangaroo. We saw a heap driving into the property yesterday but the real thrill came the next morning when a small group came right up to the side of the house early in the morning.
So, here I am in Melbourne on Anzac Day with my daughter asleep in the bed next to me. We got up early yesterday and caught the train into Melbourne stopping at ‘Southern Cross’ station which I know better by it’s former name, Spencer Street Station. What can I say. I have to admit here that I like most things rail. I like travelling by train that is. Yet, not a buff into train spotting and collecting facts about rolling stock and freight movements and deserted lines, train history and the like. No, I just like the comfort of travelling by train and well I have to admit it, there is something romantic and hypnotising about this form of travel. I love the clickedy clickedy click as you glide down tracks with a panorama passing by through a pane of glass. Perhaps as a photographer there is also some appeal to a world being filtered through a rectangle, everything you see bordered by a frame. There is also one other very important reason why I like travelling by train which ranks just as high as the emotional esoteric reasons and that is safety. I often travel by train in third world countries because it is simply a far safer way to travel than in the seat of a bus with some manic at the wheel where there seems to be only two speeds available to the driver, stopped and flat out. Don’t get me started on bus driving. No, Southern Cross Station has to be the best train station I’ve seen and oh so post modern. I remember Spenser Street Station as being a rabbit warren but now it is all above ground and on display with lots of glass and an amazing glass superstructure.
I have an interesting little anecdote about my first encounter with Spencer Street Station. Way back when time began. Well, not quiet. Somewhere around 1975 I had been staying with my Victorian cousins in a wee little town called Sandy Point down near the very south of Victoria. It was a beach town that got fairly busy in summer but became a ghost town at other times. I had hitch hiked down from Queensland at age 15 to my Uncle Terry and Aunty Bette’s place. They ran the only shop in town and were happy for me to help out over the summer. Come end of summer however I recall very clearly my Auntie Bette taking me aside in the kitchen and saying to me, ‘now, I don’t want you to grow up like my boys Mark and Laurie, so you have to go out and get a job. I’ve heard there is a free train to Mildura for grape pickers, what do you think’?
So next day, Auntie Bette and I headed off in their retired ambulance to the local employment agency and picked up my free train tickets to Mildura and a few days later I was off. The first part of the train trip was on a regular service and luckily I met a couple of young guys my age who just happened to have availed themselves of free tickets also. First stop, Spencer Street Station. After a few hours killed in Melbourne between trains we headed back to Spencer Street Station to board our train to Mildura. This is were the fun began. This wasn’t just any train, this was known as the ‘pickers train’. The Commonwealth Employment Services, CES, as it was know then, booked a complete train to ferry would be pickers up to the Riverlands. The passengers were a combination of those keen to get some paid work as well those conscripted to work, or else. Needless to say there were some not to keen to be on the train. I don’t know whether it was for this reason or because of the knowledge of how the journey progressed that just before departure all the doors were locked shut. Yep, that’s right, locked shut! Now, I know I wasn’t going to the gas chamber but even at fifteen there seemed to be something fundamentally wrong with being locked into a train.
We headed out of Spencer Street and Melbourne on dusk and that’s when the fun began. I think we were probably about hour into the journey when I heard the first window smash. I was in a compartment with the friends I had meet coming into Melbourne, all of us around age fifteen. A formidable force, not. Anyway, we spent most of the night watching the world go by along the corridor passing our compartment and listened to the smashing windows, breaking bottles and fights. There were people smoking weed, shooting up, pissing in the corridor and basically trashing the train. I was fairly young and innocent and had never seen anything like it. Apparently Vic Rail would use the trains that were about to be decommission for the ‘pickers trains’
Now if I thought the locking of the doors had echoes of trains heading to Poland well the arrival at Mildura had echoes of the slave trade. When the train arrived the platform was lined with police who surveyed the faces of those getting off the train looking obviously for crims and reprobates who they didn’t want in their town. I saw one or two duly grabbed and marched off by the constabulary One by one the carriages were unlocked and those inside were marched across the road to a large hall. There were probably about two to three hundred passenger from the pickers train assembled in front of a large table. One by one the farmers would come in and inform the ‘slave trader’ how many workers he needed. A call would go out, two pickers, four pickers, six pickers or whatever and people could either volunteer or the slave trader would go you, you, you and you. And thus began my short career as a grape picker in Northwest Victoria. I think the pickers train has long gone eventually withdrawn after a few murders on board and the arrival of the tide of keen backpackers by there own steam yet I am sure I am not the only one to equate Spencer Street Station with the departure point for pickers train heading northwest.
One thing I find really hard to imagine is that my daughter is only 18 months away from the age I was when I went to Vic. God, I can not imagine her heading off from home in just 18 months.
The countryside west of the divide was all dry and brown. A bit sad really. Some of the grazing paddocks were little more than dust. However, as soon as we started to head east from Seymour in Victoria everything started to green up. I’ve never come into Melbourne this way. It is a little bit out of the way but it is some of the nicest countryside I have seen. None of the farms would be particularly commercially viable and therefore fit into the ‘hobby farm’ category yet the countryside of small rolling hills seems to close in on the farms and create cosy little farm residences probably for weekend warriors from Melbourne.
Travelling over the range and approaching the rural outskirts of Melbourne we arrive at our missions end, to deliver Margo’s gear. She has moved just outside of the town of Hurstbridge. The countryside and location out here is fairly unique. Coming into Melbourne through the backdoor as it were it is hard to believe that Hurstbridge is just 30 something K’s from Melbourne. You could easily live rural here and work in the city without any problems. The train goes directly to Hurstbridge with people living within the gum trees, kangaroos, koala’s and other wildlife just minutes from the township. Being an Aussie I usually don’t get too excited about kangaroos yet I haven’t seen quite so many as I have down here and they are all the larger, rarer, grey kangaroo. We saw a heap driving into the property yesterday but the real thrill came the next morning when a small group came right up to the side of the house early in the morning.
So, here I am in Melbourne on Anzac Day with my daughter asleep in the bed next to me. We got up early yesterday and caught the train into Melbourne stopping at ‘Southern Cross’ station which I know better by it’s former name, Spencer Street Station. What can I say. I have to admit here that I like most things rail. I like travelling by train that is. Yet, not a buff into train spotting and collecting facts about rolling stock and freight movements and deserted lines, train history and the like. No, I just like the comfort of travelling by train and well I have to admit it, there is something romantic and hypnotising about this form of travel. I love the clickedy clickedy click as you glide down tracks with a panorama passing by through a pane of glass. Perhaps as a photographer there is also some appeal to a world being filtered through a rectangle, everything you see bordered by a frame. There is also one other very important reason why I like travelling by train which ranks just as high as the emotional esoteric reasons and that is safety. I often travel by train in third world countries because it is simply a far safer way to travel than in the seat of a bus with some manic at the wheel where there seems to be only two speeds available to the driver, stopped and flat out. Don’t get me started on bus driving. No, Southern Cross Station has to be the best train station I’ve seen and oh so post modern. I remember Spenser Street Station as being a rabbit warren but now it is all above ground and on display with lots of glass and an amazing glass superstructure.
I have an interesting little anecdote about my first encounter with Spencer Street Station. Way back when time began. Well, not quiet. Somewhere around 1975 I had been staying with my Victorian cousins in a wee little town called Sandy Point down near the very south of Victoria. It was a beach town that got fairly busy in summer but became a ghost town at other times. I had hitch hiked down from Queensland at age 15 to my Uncle Terry and Aunty Bette’s place. They ran the only shop in town and were happy for me to help out over the summer. Come end of summer however I recall very clearly my Auntie Bette taking me aside in the kitchen and saying to me, ‘now, I don’t want you to grow up like my boys Mark and Laurie, so you have to go out and get a job. I’ve heard there is a free train to Mildura for grape pickers, what do you think’?
So next day, Auntie Bette and I headed off in their retired ambulance to the local employment agency and picked up my free train tickets to Mildura and a few days later I was off. The first part of the train trip was on a regular service and luckily I met a couple of young guys my age who just happened to have availed themselves of free tickets also. First stop, Spencer Street Station. After a few hours killed in Melbourne between trains we headed back to Spencer Street Station to board our train to Mildura. This is were the fun began. This wasn’t just any train, this was known as the ‘pickers train’. The Commonwealth Employment Services, CES, as it was know then, booked a complete train to ferry would be pickers up to the Riverlands. The passengers were a combination of those keen to get some paid work as well those conscripted to work, or else. Needless to say there were some not to keen to be on the train. I don’t know whether it was for this reason or because of the knowledge of how the journey progressed that just before departure all the doors were locked shut. Yep, that’s right, locked shut! Now, I know I wasn’t going to the gas chamber but even at fifteen there seemed to be something fundamentally wrong with being locked into a train.
We headed out of Spencer Street and Melbourne on dusk and that’s when the fun began. I think we were probably about hour into the journey when I heard the first window smash. I was in a compartment with the friends I had meet coming into Melbourne, all of us around age fifteen. A formidable force, not. Anyway, we spent most of the night watching the world go by along the corridor passing our compartment and listened to the smashing windows, breaking bottles and fights. There were people smoking weed, shooting up, pissing in the corridor and basically trashing the train. I was fairly young and innocent and had never seen anything like it. Apparently Vic Rail would use the trains that were about to be decommission for the ‘pickers trains’
Now if I thought the locking of the doors had echoes of trains heading to Poland well the arrival at Mildura had echoes of the slave trade. When the train arrived the platform was lined with police who surveyed the faces of those getting off the train looking obviously for crims and reprobates who they didn’t want in their town. I saw one or two duly grabbed and marched off by the constabulary One by one the carriages were unlocked and those inside were marched across the road to a large hall. There were probably about two to three hundred passenger from the pickers train assembled in front of a large table. One by one the farmers would come in and inform the ‘slave trader’ how many workers he needed. A call would go out, two pickers, four pickers, six pickers or whatever and people could either volunteer or the slave trader would go you, you, you and you. And thus began my short career as a grape picker in Northwest Victoria. I think the pickers train has long gone eventually withdrawn after a few murders on board and the arrival of the tide of keen backpackers by there own steam yet I am sure I am not the only one to equate Spencer Street Station with the departure point for pickers train heading northwest.
One thing I find really hard to imagine is that my daughter is only 18 months away from the age I was when I went to Vic. God, I can not imagine her heading off from home in just 18 months.
posted by transavante | 1:19 p.m.
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