Melbourne

Seniors Week, Zombies and Hot Cross Buns

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Seniors week and the trains are full of happy seniors living large, going places (for Free!) taking country trains or taking their grandchildren to the zoo(for Free!). For instance I met two at the junction station who had been up to Flemington Bridge to the Homy Ped shoe factory there (4 pairs of shoes for $150!) and were now off to Werribee to visit a friend. Such larks!
Seniors week didn’t make much difference to Mr A. He’s an elderly Italian man with such bad arthritis in his shrunken swollen fingers, he has trouble gripping his MYKI card and we all just open the gate for him instead. Every day regular as clockwork he stumps in and takes the train over to Footscray market to do his shopping. He goes twice on the weekends when his family visits and he needs two trips to manage the load
There was a Zombie shuffle in town and about half a dozen Zombies dressed up in their excellent blood red and rot black make-up came through. What was funniest was the way the ticket inspectors stiffened when they saw them. Not being as hip and cool to the trend as Moi :), they thought they had a first aid situation on their hands.
But the cutest thing I saw at the junction didn’t concern seniors. It was the nerdy youth all in heavy metal black with the upside down white cross on his black baseball cap. Made him look like a hot cross bun. Sooo Cute!
Probably not the effect he was going for.

Station Stories – A dog’s life

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The police arrested someone down on the platforms at the junction.  Judging from the fist-sized item wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, the charge was possession.  (Aren’t the supermarkets sooo thoughtful for providing people with something to wrap their drugs in?) They lead the downcast man up and waited for the Police van just beside the barriers where I was working  They also brought the dog the man had with him – a docile black and tan Kelpie cross which they tied to the fence.  “We’ll just take this guy down to the station and charge him.  Then we’ll let him out and he can come collect the dog,” said they.  And off they went in the van.

This was about 5.00 pm.  The dog sat there for a while peering alertly in the direction the van had driven off.  Then something scared it and it started to cringe and shiver.  You could tell it was afraid it had been abandoned.

Dogs make me itch and sneeze, but the young medic and various customers and PSOs made soothing noises, patted the dog and brought it water which might have comforted it but didn’t stop its shivering.

People rushed past on their way home, the day darkened, the lights came on and by the time my shift had finished at 7.00 the dog was still waiting. It was a lovely dog and had many offers of a home.  We seriously discussed calling the RSPC but wiser heads told us that everything goes very slowly at a police station and the guy might still be back for his dog.  Sure enough when I rang back at 9.00 the dog had been picked up. Would the dog have been better off if we had called the RSPC?  Or would we have been separating a troubled man from his most devoted friend? Hard to call that one.

Three Cheers for Flinders Street Station!

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1910 picture of Flinders Street Station from State Library of Victoria

Your lucky, lucky narrator has just started blogging about Melbourne’s beloved central railway station for Culture Victoria.  With the help of colleague, historian Liz Downes, I’m going to be celebrating the lives and activities and past Flinders Street.  When you start to look into it, it’s really an amazing place, an inspiration to many and when you consider how many people have met there, under the clocks and in the station Ballroom (yes the station had a Ballroom!) it must be one of the great unsung heroes of Melbourne genealogy. There’s Flinders Street Station the songs, Flinders Street Station the comic, and even Flinders Street Station the teapot. 

Check it out at