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I recently received, as a reward for services to ageing, my coveted Gold Seniors Opal card. Armed with this precious token it may be that soon I will be riding the rails – on the cheap – to the four corners of NSW. In anticipation of this delightful possibility I’ve taken a ride down memory lane and present also some musical tributes to the fabled Newcastle to Sydney rail service.

I was 18 or 19, and studying in Canberra. Many weekends I would make my way back to Newcastle, usually driving my old Hillman Minx. This remarkable vehicle was getting close to its third decade and was very much the worse for wear. It had made its way to me via my Uncle Graeme in Tamworth, who had got it from a tow-truck driver who apparently picked it up from a roadside. I gather it was actually the front end of a Minx welded to the back of a similar model – a “Gazelle” or a “Husky” or something like that. The welding job was slightly askew, so the car had a “crabbing” gait and rather than driving in a straight line it worked its way along in a series of arcs, with constant correction required to keep it on the road. This was very tiring, especially given that the tired old engine burned great quantities of oil and trailed streams of blue smoke. Apparently during the welding job too, the wiring harness behind the metal dashboard caught fire, resulting in the PVC insulation on many of the wires there melting together into a blackened mass. Fortunately most of the electrics (primitive as they were) still worked, although on wet days strange and quirky things happened. You might, for example, try to switch on the windscreen wipers and get a turn indicator instead.

The fire had also consumed parts of the vinyl door trims, so I creatively recovered the Masonite backboards of these with cheap yellowish hessian fabric. Also, the car’s paint job was terrible, so I had a go at repainting it, with a brush, in a colour that ended up being something like road-marking yellow. I used to drive the Minx to school at Glendale High and once my classmate Dariusz suggested we swap cars for the drive home. Since Dariusz had an XU1 Torana I jumped at the chance. It was an interesting experiment that frightened the pair of us quite terribly. The XU1 was like a jet fighter, with wrap-around dash and a tiny sports steering wheel. A tap on the accelerator made it lurch like a rocket, which was quite surprising for a person used to driving a tired Hillman. Of the two of us though, I think Dariusz was most traumatized by the experience. “I turned the steering wheel but nothing happened,” he exclaimed. I knew exactly what he meant.

My address in Canberra was the Southside Motor Park at Fyshwick, in a caravan again supplied by my very kind Uncle Graeme. Fyshwick was a long way from the university where my presence was required almost daily, so the Minx got plenty of work.

Small though it was, Appin boasted a wrecking yard and I applied there for assistance. As luck would have it, the resident tow-truck driver should have been away on holiday but his plans had been thwarted by the same airline hostess strike that had led me on my unwise adventure. This gentleman took me back to the bridge to fetch the Minx, which I offered him as payment for the tow. He declined, advising me that an ancient bomb with a seized engine held little to no appeal. His further advice was to leave the car by the side of the road and make alternative travel arrangements to Tamworth. I could collect the car some other time, he said. I nodded, already knowing I would not be back for the Minx.

Luckily I was travelling very light and only had a small carry bag, so I retrieved this and set off from the wrecking yard with the hope of hitchhiking to some town with a railway station and making my way to Newcastle from there. I could overnight at my parent’s unoccupied house and work out how to get to Tamworth. It turned out that I had a very unrealistic idea of hitchhiking. I was evidently not the sort of young man that most people were keen to offer a ride. As I trudged along the road that led to Campbelltown I found myself unable to flag a lift. Walking past some houses I spotted one where a man appeared to be preparing his car for a journey of some sort, so I called out and asked if he was going to Campbelltown. He said no, fairly emphatically, so I started to head off again when he called back after me. Yes, actually, he was really going to Campbelltown after all, so was in a position to offer me a lift.

All I can say about the lift is that it was helpful but also a little anxiety-provoking. For a start, I shared the front bench seat with a large dog (a German shepherd I think) which had shed large quantities of hair there on what seemed to have been many previous trips. The driver also had a disconcerting characteristic. While he was watching the road he spoke with perfect clarity, but on the odd occasion when he decided to look at me, he acquired a terrible stutter.

Change trains at Gosford

Whatever the reason for this strange quirk, the driver was obliging enough to drop me at a railway station where I bought a ticket. I remember nothing of the next leg of my journey but I know I eventually arrived at Gosford. In those days this was the limit of electrification and travellers intent on venturing further to the wild north were obliged to switch to a train drawn by a diesel-powered locomotive. Being a motorist with little idea of trains, I was unaware of this useful information and, when the train halted at Gosford I remained aboard. The carriage filled again with other travellers and soon we were on our way again. This was all very well until I got a vague uneasy sense and it occurred to me that perhaps the scenery outside was moving in a different direction, relative to the window, from what it had been previously.

Alarmed, I asked a fellow traveller where the train was going. When the answer was Sydney I panicked. My eyes were drawn to an emergency button of some kind and, since I felt my predicament was an emergency, I pressed it. What happened next was that the train stopped and some chaps came along with various pieces of equipment designed to cope with emergencies. I think it was mostly first-aid stuff, but by this time I was already wondering whether I’d made a mistake so wasn’t really taking in much detail. When the chaps were made aware that my emergency was simply that I’d stayed on the train at Gosford when I should have got off they suggested without much friendliness that I might leave the train and make my way on foot to Wyong, which they assured me was quite nearby.

Sure enough I did manage to arrive on foot at Wyong, only to receive the information that the next train to Newcastle wasn’t due until 8pm or thereabouts. This did not suit me, and considering my options, I decided to hitchhike instead. Hitchhiking is a fine art, apparently. Had I known more about the process I probably would have done things differently. I might, for example, have simply set myself up on the highway at a short distance from the station so that, if I didn’t get a lift, it would be easy to revert to the rail option.

In my impatience, however, I deemed it preferable to start walking to Newcastle, figuring that every metre I put behind me made my destination closer. What surprised me was the stolid refusal of hundreds upon hundreds of motorists to consider offering me a lift. I figured that the law of probability must eventually weigh in my favour but unfortunately this was an ill-informed assumption. I’d walked a remarkably long way when I realised what a mistake my strategy had been. It was getting dark and starting to rain and the streams of cars passing me were showing no inclination to charity. But walking back to Wyong in time for the 8pm train did not seem feasible and nor did sleeping by the roadside.

Just when I resigned myself to walking all night and getting drenched by the rain a car actually pulled over for me. It was a newish sedan being driven by a young woman with a small child. She had a proposition for me. It seemed she had been stranded by the airline hostess strike and was making her journey north in a rented car. Try as she might, she had not been able to figure out how to turn the headlights on. The deal was that if I could turn the headlights on I could have a lift. Fortunately there was a manual in the glovebox so I was able to fulfill my side of the bargain with relative ease. This lovely guardian angel then fulfilled hers to more than completion, driving me to the front-door of my parents’ house in Newcastle where I was able to get clean and dry and phone my aunt and uncle in Tamworth to explain my situation.

Given that I was truly the author of all my misfortunes in this case – apart I suppose from the airline hostess strike – it isn’t fair of me to hold the railway responsible for my ordeal. Nevertheless, the episode functioned as a kind of aversion therapy and for a long time I shied away from trains.

Where do the bags go?

On those occasions when I did catch a train it seemed I always chose a day when there was “track-work” and would find myself sitting in a stationary carriage out the back of Morisset or Cowan, trying to stop myself from pushing the red button. I’m pleased to say this doesn’t happen as often these days and, as a matter of fact, the train trip is now more likely to be trouble-free than a drive on the M1 Motorway which is all-too-often blocked by accidents.

Much is made of the scenic qualities of the train trip between Newcastle and Sydney and with good reason. A trip where everything goes smoothly is a real pleasure, especially if you have a good book to read or – these days – a laptop on which you can do some work. Alas, a few too many of my train rides have been spoiled by apparently drug-crazed and intimidating fellow-passengers, extreme overcrowding or by little design features of the carriages that invite unfavourable comparison to some I’ve travelled on overseas. One annoying feature – now that it’s possible to get the train direct from Newcastle to Sydney Airport and back – is the absence of provision for the sort of luggage that air travellers are likely to have in tow.

The other almost endearing annoyance I’ve found is the frequent incomprehensibility of announcements by staff. Maybe it’s just me, but what I hear over the intercom is very often just a chaotic jumble of unintelligible vocalisations with fragmentary snatches of something almost recognisable. So I can’t tell what the next station is, I don’t know which carriage to be in if it’s a short platform and I’ve no clue about anything else that’s being announced. Once, when we were coming back from Sydney Airport with a tonne of baggage and already feeling ill from flight-flu, the insistent gibberish over the intercom made it obvious that something important was going to happen but nobody I spoke to on the train could figure out what it was. We passengers exchanged opinions on what the announcement was trying to convey and in the end agreed it probably involved getting off the train at Gosford and getting buses the rest of the way to Newcastle. Unfortunately there was further fine detail that nobody could decipher, relating to which bus one might need to find and where one might find it. We did get home, eventually, but it was a chaotic, poorly co-ordinated effort characterised by atrocious communication.

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Musical tributes

Still, all of that is just personal. Many people love the train service between Newcastle and Sydney. It is certainly a time-honoured service, celebrated – as I have discovered – by musical tributes.

This example, N.S.W.G.R, was shared with me by my friend Bruce Avard, who digitised it from an original vinyl recording on the Newcastle Vista label. It was created in about 1970 by Geoffrey Solomon and Reg Mitchell. “Both artists were members of the G&S Players. Geoff Solomon was a dentist and Reg Mitchell was a professional businessman, and active in the community.  I know he was voluntarily on a board supporting the Missions to Seamen,” Bruce wrote.  The pair had been running a successful comedy revue in Newcastle, raising funds for a “Newcastle forest” to be planted in Israel. Gilbert and Sullivan group veteran Libby Dickeson told me that the revue was modelled on the style of popular comedy duo Flanders and Swan.

Here’s another, by accomplished yodeller Peter Campbell. Thanks again to Bruce Avard, who tells me the recording was issued commercially as a Regal Zonophone 78rpm disc.

And this special favourite of mine, Sydney to Newcastle, by The Middle East.

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I’ve seen the future

While on the topic, I have noticed much talk, again, among politicians about a business case for a high-speed train linking Sydney and Newcastle, which reminds me of this column I wrote, way back when I worked at The Newcastle Herald and the endless fast train promises were already regarded as a joke. I was asked to imagine being invited to the first official run of the train, which we figured might happen by 2045. Funnily enough, I also noticed this week a resurrection of the idea to use the massive coalmine voids of the Upper Hunter as ornamental water features. This would suit the coal companies and the government, since it basically amounts to walking away from their mess and hoping the holes eventually fill with rain. No mention of the fact that exposure to the deep rock strata will probably turn the water toxic. Never mind. I dealt with that idea in this column too.

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