Sunrise over Melbourne

Squeek and Moss at Menzies Creek Station on “Puffing Billy” preserved railway in Victoria

Squeekie prepares to video the Puffing Billy Railway; no OSHA rules here!

Moss rides the Puffing Billy railway

Puffing Billy crosses a canyon

Squeek and Moss ride the 109 tram into downtown Melbourne

The City Tour Tram at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne



Day Twenty-four (Thursday, February 12, 2009)-- Today was an at sea day as Rotterdam sailed down the East Coast of Australia headed toward Melbourne. It also was day two of my birthday celebration. The Tasmanian Sea was very rough today, and Squeekie and I spent most of the day in her “office” in the Crow’s Nest on Deck Nine, she doing Edison work and I writing blog stuff. This evening we dined in the Pinnacle Grill to celebrate my birthday. Kim, the Grill Manager, seated us at Table Six, which she has learned is our favourite table aboard the Rotterdam, where we had dined with Captain Olav early in the voyage. The meal was excellent, of course! Squeekie had a very moving card for me and gave me two books on the “Puffing Billy” train we will ride in Melbourne tomorrow (see below). She is so well prepared all the time! She had ordered those books back in December in anticipation of our trip! I had a much enjoyed birthday celebration with the most wonderful girl in the world, my Squeekie. . . .


Day Twenty-five (Friday, February 13, 2009)-- I awakened this morning to find the Rotterdam far into Port Philip Bay, nearing Port Melbourne. The sunrise was beautiful, but the red-gold colours were due to the fires still burning out of control in the outback behind Melbourne. These fires have been in the news since we were in Vanuatu last week; over one hundred people have died and thousands of hectares (read acres) of land have been burned over. The bush fires, as they are called in Australia, are similar to what we get in Southern California, caused by high temperatures, strong winds, insufficient rain, and so forth. Anyway, I snapped a picture of the sunrise as we neared the dock at Port Melbourne. By the time Squeekie awoke, we were tied up and the gangway had been put out. This anchorage is very different from what we had experienced in Sydney. We were some distance away from the city centre, tied to a pier jutting out into the bay with a corrugated iron building standing on the wharf which appeared to be a relic from an earlier age. Across the pier from Rotterdam was the “Spirit of Tasmania” ferry. On the horizon were the skyscrapers of downtown Melbourne.

The city of Melbourne, named for Lord Melbourne, the British Prime Minister of the moment, was founded in 1837, the first year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Growth was stimulated by the Ballarat gold rush in the 1850s, and already in the mid-19th century the city had established a firm policy of green spaces and control over growth. As the day went by—and I must say right now that one day was not nearly enough time to spend in this WONDERFUL city—we came to see how different is Melbourne from Sydney. Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city (behind Sydney), and is the capital of the state of Victoria. This city lives in the shadow of Sydney but it is superior in a number of ways. It appears to be the cultural nexus of Australia and is clearly one of the world’s most livable cities despite the current drought and fires in the nearby countryside.

Tour into the Dandenongs-- More about Melbourne and its trams in a bit, but first, here is what Squeekie and I did in the morning. We had signed up for the “Puffing Billy Steam Train and Countryside” tour. Squeekie wanted me to have a steam train ride in honour of my birthday, and all of you who know me know I will not turn down access to railways. So off we went in a coach into Melbourne’s western suburbs. The ride gave us a good look at Melbourne’s suburbs, and we could see how nice a region this area is, despite the fires burning in the bush some 30 kilometers north and west of town. Our coach headed west into the mountain range locally known as the Dandenongs, which are the southern extension of the Blue Mountains we visited near Sydney, and which also are, by the way, every bit as blue because of their forests of eucalyptus trees.

Our roadway took us into the community of Ferntree Gully, already in the hills but still appearing to be a suburb. Several tight turns around roundabouts (traffic circles) brought our coach into the village of Belgrave, which clearly was a vacation community, not a suburb. As the driver shoehorned our motorcoach down a narrow street there came into view a sight which will always get my attention: narrow gauge rails and a steam locomotive whose puffs of steam and smoke told that it was alive and working! Belgrave Station is the terminus of Australia’s most famous preserved railway, popularly known as “Puffing Billy.”

The Puffing Billy Railway is a portion of the original Victorian Government Railways branchline which once provided access into the Dandenong Mountains. Construction began in 1899 from the end of the main line railway at Ferntree Gully toward Gembrook. The railway, built to narrow gauge to save on construction and operating expenses, opened in December of 1900. For twenty years the line was heavily used and quite profitable, but from the Great Depression onwards business declined rapidly. A series of landslides in 1952 and 1953 caused the government railway to close the line, but loud public outcry and formation of the “Puffing Billy Preservation Society” led to continued running of excursion trains on the line. In 1958, that portion of the line between Ferntree Gully and Belgrave was closed and converted to standard gauge as the main line was extended; the preservation society had to relocate its operations to Belgrave. Between 1958 and 1962 the preservation society had to build a new station, shops and sheds at Belgrave, had to relocate tracks around the landslide, and repair tracks to Menzies Creek and repair rolling stock; no trains were run. In 1962 service was restored on the narrow gauge line from Belgrave to Menzies Creek, but it took until 1998 for the entire line to be reopened to its original terminus at Gembrook. This line, the most popular tourist railway in Australia, carried its 8 millionth passenger in 2006.

Squeekie and I debarked onto the platform, she to take care of some urgent issues and I to walk forward to see the locomotive. Eventually we came back together and settled into a passenger car (“carriage” in British/Aussie usage) that had been reserved for our tour group. These cars were built back in 1919 and have been beautifully preserved over the last sixty years by the preservation group who saved the railway from scrapping. They feature benches placed in the middle of the car and running in the same direction as the train runs; there are no windows, just open spaces with some horizontal bars to keep passengers in. It is a long-standing tradition among those who ride the Puffing Billy to sit upon the window sill and hang your legs outside as the train runs through the forest. As soon as she learned this, Squeekie, in the spirit of the moment, set herself just so and prepared to ride the Puffing Billy and video its journey through the Dandenongs. I, on the other hand, prepared to take still pictures, but with my body inside the carriage—I didn’t want my not-inconsiderable bulk to overturn the train!

With a whistle from the small tank engine at the head of the train, our very long train departed Belgrave. The whistle, by the way, drew my attention right away because it was not the high-pitched shriek that is customary to British-built locomotives, but rather was the lower, throatier cry typical of American-built engines. A quick consultation with the Puffing Billy book that Squeekie had given me for my birthday, and I learned that No. 6A, the tank engine pulling our train, was a copy of a standard Baldwin 2-6-2 tank engine design very popular in the 1890s. The first two locomotives of this class had been built by Baldwin and shipped to Australia, and the railroad’s own workshops had copied the design, rivet by rivet, to make a half-dozen more. Our 6A was erected in 1901 at Victorian Railways’ Newport Shops, and had a complete restoration in 2002.

Before we left Belgrave we passed by the railway shops and there, to my surprise and pleasure, stood locomotive G42. I had not expected to see this, indeed I did not even know of its existence, but there it was in all its historic significance! G42 is a Beyer-Garratt locomotive, built in 1926 for use on the narrow gauge rail lines of Victorian Railways. After being saved from scrapping it went to the Puffing Billy Railway, where restoration to operating condition was completed in 2004 at a cost of 1.7 million dollars (Australian). I have known of this very historic type of locomotive all of my adult life, and have seen pictures of their operation in various places around the globe, but none of this British-designed and built steam locomotive ever were used in North America. G42 was the very first Beyer-Garratt I had ever seen in reality. Unfortunately, there was no way I could stop the train and run over to see it up close, but I snapped pictures as best I could as we puffed by.

Out little train wound its way through the forests of the Dandenongs, running along the sides of canyons and occasionally crossing over; one particular canyon crossing—very famous in photographs of the railway—drew my attention, and I snapped over a dozen pictures as we crossed over. Squeekie pointed the video camera toward the head of the train and stuck with it for virtually the entire run. She looked like a young girl rail fan with her feet and legs hanging down and a grin on her face as she played at videographer! Past the tree ferns and gum trees we chugged, enjoying to the fullest this lovingly preserved window on Australia’s past.

After three miles of steam, smoke, and eucalyptus oil, our train stopped at the station of Menzies Creek. To my horror we all were asked to debark from our carriage. This was the end of our ride on historic Puffing Billy! We had only traveled three miles, and still had nearly twenty miles to go, but this was to be all for us. I had not expected to be cut short like this, and you can imagine that I was more than a little angry. Squeekie and I walked up to the locomotive and took many pictures of it, and of the engineer (“driver” in Aussie-speak). I stayed back as long as I could, refusing to get on the bus and taking pictures as my own way of sending a message of my disappointment at having my steam trip cut short. (That having been said, I must add that I am glad that I got what I did, because I learned that with the high fire danger in the area it was lucky that we had gotten a steam locomotive on our train instead of a diesel.)

The rest of our tour aboard the bus was a look at the forests and viewpoints in the Dandenong Mountains. It was interesting enough, but the tour lost my attention upon leaving Puffing Billy. Eventually we drove back through Melbourne, and were deposited at the head of the pier where Rotterdam was tied up. And just across the roadway from the pier was a tram! Yes, an electric trolley car (as Americans would say), a very nice, modern one waiting to carry passengers. Those of you who know me well know that trolleys (trams) can draw my attention every bit as much as do steam locomotives.

And so, to a bit more history-- As we had driven through the city returning from our tour into the Dandenongs, I noticed that rather than destroy its 19th century architecture, the city tends to incorporate it into more modern structures. And I also noticed the prevalence of trolley cars on the city’s streets. (I knew that Melbourne still had trolley cars, but I did not know the extent to which they had been saved.) In my opinion, Melbourne’s greatest claim to goodness is the fact that, unlike most other cities in the industrial world, she did NOT get rid of (or significantly downsize) her electric tram system, which remains today as the primary component of her urban transport system. (You just had to guess that this would be of significant excitement to me!)

Melbourne's tram system began operations in 1885, when the first San Francisco-style cable line operated by the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company opened for business. The cable tram system grew to 75 kilometers of double track and 1200 cars and trailers, the fourth largest cable system in the world. The Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company enjoyed a monopoly franchise from 1885 to 1916, after which the system was handed over to the government, who operated the system through the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board. The cable car system was so comprehensive within its area of operation, that there was no way for a competing electric tram service to get into the city centre. Therefore, electric trams, when they started in Melbourne, for the most part initially acted as feeders to the cable system. Nonetheless, due to high operating costs, the cable system was gradually electrified; by the time the last line was removed from Bourke St. in 1940, the system had operated successfully for 55 years.

Cable cars notwithstanding, Australia’s first electric tram line, from Box Hill Station to Doncaster in the suburbs of Melbourne, opened in 1889. It was in a remote area and had little traffic along with some serious technical issues; it died by 1896. The only hint now that there was ever a tram running in the Doncaster area is a road along the former route - Tram Road. The first serious electric trams in Melbourne began in 1906 in North Melbourne, by a company interested in selling electricity to customers along the tram route. In other parts of Melbourne, groups of local councils got together and formed various municipal Tramways Trusts to build electric lines which fed the cable system.

Eventually, all of these predecessors, whether corporate or local government-owned, were consolidated into the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board. The MMTB needed a standard tram design and came up with the famous W-class design which is still running.

After the Second World War, when all that was shiny and new (like the motor car) was embraced, and all that was established and old-fashioned (like the tram) was rejected, Melbourne alone stood against the tide. The Chairman of the MMTB, Sir Robert Risson, far from having a taste for tramway closures like his opposite numbers elsewhere, stoutly defended the trams against a hostile press. He upgraded track by setting it in mass concrete (when this was still politically possible) and even the Government could see that removing trams would be a waste of the investment. He argued that trams would always attract more patronage than an equivalent bus service, and proved it in 1956 when the Bourke St bus service (which had replaced a cable tram line) was upgraded to a tram in time for the Olympic games, despite opposition voiced in the newspapers. No doubt the cause was aided by an intransigent union, who were so determined that any bus which replaced a tram must have two-man crewing, that the economics was not really weighted in favour of the bus anyway. The other factor in Melbourne's favour that is often mentioned is the wide main streets, which meant that there was less obstruction of cars than in other cities. By the mid-1970s, Melbourne could see how lucky she had been not to have followed the fashions of the 1950s, and even the conservative government, normally given to starving public transport to death, agreed to the purchase of new trams.
“light rail” transit continued in the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly, a new City-Circle tram line was built and opened in 1994 to run around the heart of Melbourne’s downtown area. A conservative government decided that the government-owned tram operator had to be privatized, and Yarra Trams came to be privately operated on a long term franchise basis; the government owning the right of way and the tracks leased out to the operator.
At first there were two operators, but since April 2004 has remained as the only operator.

Our tram tour of Melbourne-- Squeekie and I boarded the 109 Line tram at its end of the line station opposite the Port Melbourne pier, and rode it into the heart of downtown. There we boarded one of the famous W-class trolleys (Car 982) to ride the “City Circle” tour, a free service operated by Yarra Trams that is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. These historic trams run on a circular route around Melbourne's Central Business District, running past or near many of central Melbourne's major tourist attractions. (There are also special restaurant trams running on this line at certain times, but we did not see any of these.)

After the spin around the city we got off at historic Flinders Street Station so I could get some train pictures. Then we had a snack at a shopping mall on the banks of the Yarra River, and caught a 109 back to the Pier and our ship. Squeekie has said that she did not get enough of Melbourne, and I agree, but for different reasons. In any case, I am grateful to her for allowing me to ride steam and electric and snap train pictures all day long, while she was deprived of her explorations. Thanks, Squeek!

Crossing the Bar-- We returned to Rotterdam around 4:30 in the afternoon, as the ship was departing before 6pm. As Rotterdam pulled away from the pier we stood forward on Deck Six saying good-bye to Melbourne and hoping to return someday soon. The vast expanse of Port Philip Bay offered us some nice views, but after about two hours we arrived at the entrance to the open ocean. This area is known as “the Rip” because of the sharp contrast between the calm waters of the huge bay and the rough waters of the water known as Bass Strait outside. (Bass Strait is the body of water separating the island of Tasmania from Australia.) A sharp difference in water depths in combination with powerful tidal streams and a significant bar at the mouth of Port Philip creates very obvious rough water, and can be seen in the pictures we took. Captain Olav had told us of the difficulty in crossing the bar. As Rotterdam waved about in the rough waters, we bid farewell to Melbourne. Our next stop, after another day at sea, will be Adelaide.