Slow Train to Melbourne
In 1889 Henry Parkes gave what became known as the Federation Address. He argued that the colonies should unite as one nation. He made the speech in Tenterfield, 20 kilometres from Wallangarrra on the Queensland border. To get to a connecting train from Queensland to NSW, Parkes had to alight at Wallangarra, jump into a horse drawn coach and cross the border to Tenterfield. Of course, the timetables didn’t connect so Parkes was forced to cool his heels drinking a few rums in the Royal Hotel. Suitably fortified, he staggered down to the School of Arts, delivered the Federation Address and the concept of a unified Australia was born. When he sobered up the next morning he might have wondered if he could have saved himself a hangover if the two train lines connected and he didn’t need to get off at Wallangarra to change trains across the border.
But he didn’t. And nor did any of the soon-to-be elected Premiers that formed the Federation of Australian States. To this day the Premiers struggle to agree on anything. It was a miracle that they sort of agreed on how to deal with the pandemic. The Voice Referendum showed us that sectional and self-interested party politics make constitutional reform almost impossible to achieve even when the need is obvious.
So, it isn’t all that surprising that, instead of building a rail network that united the country, the three major colonies ignored the advice from British Government and built separate rail lines with separate gauges which meant travellers had to change trains if travelling between NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Not only did they have to change trains, they had to cross borders to do so. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 1995, 94 years after Federation, that state capitals on the mainland of Australia were joined by a single rail link.
Has this led to a unified approach to rail travel on the Australian continent? No. On a recent train trip from Sydney to Melbourne I was bemused to discover that the XPT was run by NSW Travel Link, not a partnership between the two state rail authorities. This meant that the train stopped at Albury, just across the NSW border, and the NSW crew were replaced by a Victorian crew necessitating shutting down the “dining car” (which isn’t really a dining car). The reverse occurs on the return run when the Victorian crew are replaced by a New South Wales one. Both crews were unfailingly polite and friendly. They were doing their level best with the tatty cards they had been dealt.
The archaic nature of train travel in this country was highlighted when, waiting for the Sydney train at Benalla, I asked the station master if there was WiFi at the station.
“Outside”, he said.
“Outside?”
“In the phone booth.”
My confused look prompted him to elaborate.
“There’s WiFi in the phone booth.”
I went outside and, sure enough, the WiFi worked in the phone booth.
Not only is there no WiFi at the Benalla Railway Station, there is none on the XPT from Sydney to Melbourne. As we were advised as the train departed on a recent Sydney to Melbourne trip, “this train is very old and doesn’t have WiFi. Transport NSW apologises for any inconvenience.”
We are breathlessly awaiting new trains being built in Spain that will be much more modern (presumably with WiFi) and will knock two hours off the existing journey. That’s right two hours! Because the tracks are so old, these new trains can’t travel as fast as they might in, say, Europe or Japan. The new trains will get passengers to and from the two major capitals in 9 hours. It’s worth noting that trains travelling a similar distance in Europe manage to do so in about 2 hours 30 mins. God knows how quickly Japanese trains could cover that distance.
As Dorothy Mackellar so memorably put it, we are “a wide brown land”. She might have added “flat”. The perfect topography to traverse by a fast train. Or at least one that takes less time than a truck. Or a horse. In the early days of the (20th, rail travel was very popular in Australia. The photos on the wall at the Benalla Railway Station showed images of a magnificent structure (knocked down in the middle of the night in the 70’s), a grand dining room fit for a king or queen and a well patronised bar. In northern NSW there was the quaint train to Byron that stopped in the bar at the Railway Hotel. Trains traversed MacKellar’s “land of sweeping trains” but no one in government thought to update them. To replace the old tracks to they could take new, fast trains. To capitalise on our the magnificent, beautifully railway stations all over the country. No. They decided to close down the stations, tear down some wonderful buildings and to force travellers on to the roads. Or, for those who could afford it, onto aeroplanes.
Whiling away the time on the Sydney/Melbourne XPT, I wondered how many of our leaders have actually been on this train? How much influence have the airline companies had over government in delaying or shelving plans for a rail network that would attract passengers? Why haven’t successive governments of all persuasions, many with sizeable surpluses in years gone by, taken the bull by the horns and updated our pathetically antiquated rail network? Why, at a time when global warming threatens our very existence, haven’t we prioritised rail transport over all other forms?