Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  A newspaper account from 1920, in The Northern Territory Times and Gazette, describes a typical trip to Pine Creek. The train was made up of a loco, two passenger carriages and ten goods cars. There were only twenty-two passengers—‘the Territory’s usual mixed assortment of Britishers, Greeks, Italians, Russians, Swiss, Swedes, Half-castes and Chinese’. The reporter further describes the scene in the carriages: ‘every mother’s son had a bottle or a case of grog. “Ave a drink” was the password and no one declined—it wasn’t manners and it was the only way to avoid arguments.’

  Apparently, not one bottle was left when the train pulled into Pine Creek after the nine-and-a-half-hour journey of 235 kilometres.

  At one point, while the train was stopped at a remote station, a fight broke out between two drinkers:

  As the two combatants worked from the original scene of the action to other parts of the carriage, occupants shifted out onto the platform at the rear or onto the footboard to give them more room. The guard coming along for tickets spoilt the show by promising to throw out the grog unless there was an improvement in prevailing conditions. All hands then had a drink and declared that the guard wasn’t a bad sort of poor bastard.

  A bridge was finally built across the Katherine River and the first train crossed in 1926. Emungalen then closed and the town of Katherine grew on the new site across the river. The line was meant to continue on to Daly Waters but, when funds ran out in the Depression, it stopped at Birdum, some 515 kilometres from Darwin. There was absolutely nothing at Birdum—except a buffer to indicate the end of the line.

  World War II meant moving troops to the north and Darwin became a strategic defence post after the Japanese bombing raid that killed over 200 people. Shipping wasn’t safe and there were 120,000 troops in Darwin, so the railway was essential for supplies. The rolling stock had been run down badly by then and the first troops arrived in converted cattle trucks. Soldiers from the eastern states evidently named the train Spirit of Protest in a sarcastic parody of the modern Sydney to Melbourne train Spirit of Progress.

  Plans were made to extend the railway from Birdum to Alice Springs. Instead of this, however, the Stuart Highway was sealed between Alice Springs and Darwin.

  After the war, despite the introduction of diesel hydraulic rail cars with air-conditioning, the line was not well patronised. It deteriorated until its closure in 1976, following damage from Cyclone Tracy two years before and frequent flooding. The rails were sold off (at $50 a ton) to Taiwan and the Philippines, and the sleepers were donated to Indonesia under the Colombo Plan.

  Many Darwin people mourned the loss of their Never-Never Line, as historian James Harvey noted: ‘Its trains had run whenever asked, despite enemy bombs, cyclones, floods, economic depressions and recessions, government and public indifference, and the inexorable delays caused by the tropical environment.’

  It’s an irony that the Never-Never Line has now disappeared into Australian history and folklore. You see, while that great little line no longer exists, the long-promised Adelaide to Darwin Railway, first mooted in 1858 and so long a part of Aussie folklore, is now a reality. The new Ghan ran from Adelaide to Darwin for the first time in February 2004.

  JH

  FARE EVASION

  RUSSELL HANNAH/JIM HAYNES

  There were many ingenious ways of avoiding paying your fare on the railways, and the most common involved doing it in the relative comfort of a passenger compartment, rather than the dirt and discomfort of a goods van. Hiding in the toilet was a favourite, but any ticket inspector worth his salt would lie in wait if the ‘engaged’ sign was up. Eventually the scaler would have to come out.

  The following story is a favourite among Kiwis living in Australia.

  It seems that there were six friends, three New Zealanders and three Australians, who worked in Wagga and decided to catch the South West Mail up to Sydney to watch an Australia–New Zealand Test match. When they got to the station, the Aussie blokes noticed that the Kiwis only bought one ticket between the three of them.

  ‘How are the three of you going to travel on just one ticket?’ asked one of the Aussies quizzically.

  ‘Watch and you might learn something,’ said one of the Kiwis.

  Well, they boarded the train and the journey began. As soon as they saw the inspector enter the carriage, the three Kiwis headed straight for the toilet and crammed into it. The inspector checked the Aussies’ tickets and noticed that the ‘engaged’ sign was showing on the toilet door. He banged on the door and in his most authoritative voice said, ‘Tickets, please.’

  The toilet door opened about a centimetre, just enough to push the ticket through. The inspector clipped the ticket and moved on.

  The Australians were greatly taken by this and thought it was most clever, especially for New Zealanders. They decided that they would do the same on the return trip.

  When they arrived at Central for the return trip, the Aussies bought one ticket between them but the Kiwis bought three platform tickets at a penny each. Again, the Aussie blokes were quite perplexed by it all. Perhaps we should mention that Australia had won the Test, so the Kiwis were rather despondent, not too happy with Australians in general and in a mood for revenge.

  ‘How are you three going to travel without any ticket at all?’ asked one of the Aussies.

  ‘Watch and you might learn something,’ replied one of the Kiwis.

  The train pulled out and after a while one of the Kiwis said, ‘I think the inspector’s coming through.’

  The Aussie trio had been keeping an eye on the toilet to make sure it wasn’t occupied when they needed it. Now they made a beeline for the cubicle in order to be ensconced before the inspector came through.

  After a sufficient break of about ten minutes, one of the Kiwis got up, strode purposefully down the carriage, stood outside the cubicle that all three Aussies were crammed into, and called out, in a most authoritative voice, ‘Tickets, please.’

  THE RUNAWAY TRAIN

  GRAHAME WAT

  The train roared down the mountain, the engine driver paled,

  He bellowed at the fireman, ‘The flaming brakes have failed!’

  The train raced on freewheeling, the whistle warned ahead,

  Around the bends at breakneck speed, through signals green and red.

  Faster, ever faster, the driver tried in vain!

  He pulled every lever but he couldn’t stop that train.

  It hurtled across bridges and crossings in a flash,

  At a hundred miles an hour upon its downward dash.

  Sparks came off the spinning wheels; the guard began to swear,

  The driver and the fireman said a silent prayer.

  Then slowly, very slowly, for the mountains had now gone,

  The speed began to slacken, but still the train rolled on.

  The further that it travelled from that mad descent,

  The further that the train rolled free, the slower that it went.

  For forty miles the train slowed down, on level ground once more,

  Till it stopped at Central Station, platform twenty-four.

  Well the driver was a hero; they still talk of the day,

  The Minister for Railways had quite a lot to say.

  ‘This is a special day,’ he said, ‘a day of joy sublime,

  For it is the first occasion that this train has run on time!’

  MEAN MIKE

  RUSSELL HANNAH/JIM HAYNES

  An old railway mate of my dad’s, named Ken, was firing a late-night mail train out of Central. It was about 11 p.m. and his driver was Mean Mike, the most miserable bastard on the New South Wales railways, and mean!

  Before they even pulled out of Central, Mean Mike said he was starving hungry. So, he grabbed the banjo, took a couple of eggs out of his tucker box and proceeded to fry them on the banjo in the fire. A banjo is a coal shovel, drivers and firemen cooked their meals on a clean coal shovel in the open firebox.

  He didn’t o
ffer Ken any; Mean Mike wouldn’t have offered his own mother any, even if she hadn’t eaten for a week.

  Mean Mike scoffed his eggs with a bit of toasted bread as they headed out of Central. But soon he turned pale—and then he started to turn a bit green. Next thing, he was leaning out of the cabin, spewing his heart out.

  Ken was a bit worried. He decided Mean Mike was probably not fit for work and told him he should go home. Ken said he’d ring ahead for a replacement driver when they pulled into Strathfield.

  Mean Mike, however, assured him that everything was okay. Since he had offloaded the eggs, he felt much better. Sure enough, Mean Mike seemed to have made a perfect comeback and was looking much improved. Ken assumed it was just a passing stomach complaint.

  When the train reached Valley Heights in the mountains, Mean Mike was evidently feeling a bit peckish again, so he grabbed the banjo and pulled out another couple of eggs. He followed exactly the same procedure—cooking the eggs and eating them and, within a few minutes, he’s gone green again and before long he’s leaning out of the cabin throwing up that lot of eggs.

  Ken figured there must be something seriously wrong with Mean Mike. Maybe he had a duodenal ulcer or terminal stomach cancer. He reckoned that they should get a replacement driver as soon as possible, so Mike could go and see a doctor.

  But, once again, Mean Mike said he was quite okay. It was only the eggs that made him feel crook, he said. It was fine now; he didn’t have any more eggs in his tucker box, so he’d be okay.

  Ken thought this was all a bit strange, but, as Mean Mike once again looked to have recovered, he decided not to insist on getting a replacement driver. ‘Do eggs always make you feel crook?’ he asked Mean Mike.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mike replied, ‘I think I’m allergic to eggs.’

  Ken was at a loss to understand why anyone would keep eating eggs if they knew they were allergic to them. You see, he had no idea just how mean Mean Mike was. But he found out when he asked, ‘Why do you keep eating ’em if you think you’re allergic to them?’

  Well, Mean Mike looked at Ken and said, ‘I’ve got to eat ’em! You see . . . I’ve got chooks!’

  THE LADIES IN GREY

  Women didn’t become train drivers, firemen, guards or stationmasters until relatively recently. True, some became gatekeepers and carriage cleaners but these were a relatively small proportion of railway workers.

  There was one area of the railways, however, where the workforce consisted predominantly of women. This was the catering department that flourished during the age of steam and spawned the great Railway Refreshment Rooms—the RRR.

  For many decades ‘the Great Triple R’ was ruled over by those fearsome ‘ladies in grey’.

  In pre-railway days, travellers walked or rode. Fifty kilometres was a good distance to travel each day. In colonial Australia, shanties, pubs, boarding houses and roadside inns were scattered along the roads.

  The railways changed all that. A week’s journey could be compressed into a day, and a series of refreshment rooms grew up on Australian railway stations. In New South Wales alone, at the height of the steam era, there were over 120 such rooms scattered over the stations of the rail system.

  The first New South Wales train rolled out of Sydney terminal on 26 September 1855. It went as far as Parramatta. Early growth was slow, and the need to build refreshment rooms into the stations was not a high priority for railway builders.

  In fact, the famous engineer John Whitton, the man responsible for the enormous growth in the railway system up until 1890, was actively opposed to building refreshment rooms. It was a waste of precious resources, he said; all available money should go into building the lines.

  The official history of the New South Wales railways, published in 1955, tells us:

  The first refreshment room [at Sydney terminal] consisted of a counter and two stools. It was open only shortly before the departure and arrival of trains. Supplies were brought to the station by a kind old lady from her pastry cook shop in Botany Road. It was quite common to see hungry passengers anxiously looking out for Mrs Moon and her basket when she was a little later than usual.

  Despite Mrs Moon’s recognition as the first purveyor of pastries at Sydney Station, other records indicate that that honour went to a certain Henry William Dudley, who initially operated out of a tent on some wasteland outside the station. His venture proved disastrous. The tent was constantly at risk of burning down due to cinders from the passing steam engines and, on one occasion, it blew away in a strong wind.

  The early refreshment rooms were all leased out to private operators. Many of them did not seem to impress Railways Commissioner John Rae; in the early 1870s he wrote:

  There is no part of our railway economy so defective as the arrangements of the supply of refreshments to passengers . . . the keepers of what are facetiously called refreshment rooms on our Railways are little more than apple-stall holders, and vendors of lollipops and stale pastry, serving out junks of sandwiches and messes of tea and coffee to their customers, without any regard to their accommodation and comfort.

  Finally, in 1917, the New South Wales government stepped in, took control of the previously leased refreshment rooms, and thus began the great era of the Great Triple R. Women became part of the railway workforce. Nearly eighty per cent of the staff was female and they earned just under half the wages of men.

  Waitresses on the railways earned thirty-five shillings per week. Their male counterparts picked up seventy-five shillings. Women were not classified as permanent workers and had no access to government superannuation, long service leave or sick pay.

  Trains stopped at refreshment room stations at any hour of the day or night. Hours of operation for refreshment rooms were often something like 2.30 a.m. to 4.30 a.m., followed by 7 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.; or 9 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. followed by 9.30 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. Though the actual hours worked were the regulation eight, they were spread over twenty-one hours of the day.

  Many women lived in the railway accommodation and had compulsory deductions taken from their wages for meals and accommodation. This was a source of much discontent and, together with the irregular hours and broken shifts the women had to work, may have accounted for their legendary grumpiness. Stories of the grumpy ‘ladies in grey’ abound. This one is typical:

  RRR waitress: What do you want?

  Weary traveller: How about a cup of tea, a pie and a few kind words?

  RRR waitress: There’s your tea. There’s your pie. That’s two and sixpence.

  Weary traveller: What about the few kind words?

  RRR waitress: Don’t eat the pie!

  When the train pulled into the station, all hell broke loose as a trainload of hungry and thirsty passengers descended on ‘the ref rooms’. They all had to be fed and refreshed within periods of time that ranged from ten to forty minutes.

  Working the Great Triple R was a stressful occupation. When the train left, the staff had cleaning-up duties. Then the ‘ref room’ would revert to its usual somnolence until the next train reignited the frantic activity.

  In some places, passengers sat down to silver-service three-course meals in ornate dining rooms. Other stations just had fruit and pie and coffee stalls called ‘tearooms’. The humble railway pie was the fast food of the railway era.

  It wasn’t passengers’ needs that made the Railway Refreshment Rooms such a great institution; it was the fact that trains used steam power. Steam locos needed to be changed, watered and re-coaled. This meant that long stops at some stations were inevitable.

  These steam maintenance facilities were not necessarily in major towns. They were more likely to be at the junction of several railway lines. Thus the major refreshment rooms existed where there were significant loco yards, like Werris Creek and South Grafton—not Grafton City.

  The war years produced some of the RRR’s finest hours. Packed troop trains were a regular occurrence but troop movements were secret. The women of the RRR were often gi
ven just one hour’s notice to feed up to 4000 men. During this time, assistance was provided by the Voluntary Aid Detachment. In the small towns like Gloucester, north of Maitland, the RRR and the VAD would service up to five troop trains a day. During the course of the war, they served over one million meals at that station alone.

  Perhaps the finest hour of any refreshment room occurred during the floods of 1955 in Narrabri. Water was lapping over the platform and the surrounding area was one vast inland sea when the last train arrived in from Walgett. The passengers soon realised that they were trapped at the station. The refreshment room cooking facilities were still operational but there was a serious shortage of food supplies.

  Jim Madigan, an earth-moving contractor from Gunnedah, who was on the train, would write:

  The adaptability of people in an emergency was amazing. Two cows that were tethered near the station were brought onto the platform and milked to supply the babies and children amongst the crowd. Six sheep and a pig seen floating past still alive were rescued from the water only to be slaughtered. This meat plus a bag of potatoes consigned northwest from Narrabri were used to cook meals in the refreshment room facilities. During the first 48 hours of the flood the people stranded on the station were probably the best fed in the whole of Narrabri.

  When steam power was replaced by diesel power, trains no longer needed lengthy stops for re-coaling or loco changeovers. Long distance trains carried on-board buffet or dining cars. The rise of road and air transport also meant that the catering services started losing money.

  By the 1970s, country passenger services had declined drastically and most branch services were gone by the early 1980s.

  These days, XPT services stop just long enough to disgorge their passengers and luggage and pick up those who are boarding.