12.3.11 – Puffing Billy * 2

12.3.11 – Puffing Billy * 2  (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)

It was so green, and so cool in the forest depths, the hugest trees we have seen yet soaring upwards, some with trunks of incredible width, their top leaves stroking the blue sky far above.  As Foster and Glenda drove us up to the Dandenong Mountains, suddenly we heard a whistle and saw a haze of white steam clouds amongst the tree trunks.  Foster drew in to a layby covered in rust coloured forest bark, and there, just below us, dappled by the leaf shaded sun, was a little, narrow railway track, 3 foot wide.  And just puffing and gasping up that track was ‘Puffing Billy’ a tiny, gleaming black steam engine, pulling ten open coaches, bursting with waving and laughing children and adults, out for a picnic at Emerald Lake, just up the track.  There, railway company, operated totally by volunteers, has a neat little cream wooden station, with level crossings at each end.  Another engine, this time shiny red, with a funnel like the ones you see in cowboy movies, chuffed into view, and much shunting and puffing of both trains resulted.  This delighted especially Bill and Foster, who were in ecstasies about the power and engineered elegance of steam technology. 

We drove on, ever higher.  So often the typical pictures of Australia one sees are of wide, level reddish brown planes, but in fact in New South Wales and Victoria, we have enjoyed lots of rich green mountain ranges.  We arrived at the look out.  There was Melbourne laid out before us, its suburbs peeping out from between a rich forest of gum trees, which are planted to provide shade as much as to look attractive.  In the blue and misty distance, the CBD (Central Business District) stuck its jagged spikes skywards.

Meg and Glenda at Sweetwater

Meg and large tree!

Next came lunch in the wine growing district, at Sweetwater Cafe in a beautiful old homestead building, now sophisticated hotel and restaurant.  The meal was delicious, and through high windows the lush garden greenery almost tapped on the glass. The discussion ranged over aspects of Australian life – the cosmopolitan ethnic mix of Melbourne, to be welcomed as an enrichment, but needing to be worked at; the cost of living; the effect of British culture on Australia.  Driving home, as we passed the site where the soap opera Neighbours is filmed, we enlightened Foster as to the actual meaning of some of the Scots songs he’d been familiar with since childhood, for example, ‘Roaming in the gloaming’ meaning walking in the twilight; ‘Auld land syne’ meaning memories of past times.  And so we parted, hoping that Foster and Glenda will one day visit us in Scotland.  Yet again, we have been treated with amazing kindness and hospitality by friends in this sunny country. But tonight this sunny country is unremittingly hot for cold climate Scots – and so there’s another Puffing Billy not to mention Puffing Maggie.