[m i a o w] the cat

My experience of Baxter Station does not rate highly on my list of public transportation. Not only is there no parking, no toilets, no phone and no ‘enclosed waiting areas’ - you could pretty much say that there’s NO STATION. It’s actually just a bus shelter that’s been whacked down near a set of train lines. That’s it, baby. Ticket machine? No - you’re just supposed to realise that there is going to be a ticket machine on the train. That’s right. Because everyone travels with $12.60 in coins for the COIN ONLY machine. Everyone except for me, who drove like a retarded chicken around the cold, cold streets of Baxter looking for somewhere I could park that was near enough to the glorified bus shelter so that I could skillfully avoid potential rapists and pillagers.

It took me some time to realise that the ’station’ is down a gravel path about 200 metres off the main road. There’s room up the end of the gravel path to turn the car around, drop someone off and drive away again. And that’s it. I’m not at all woosy about walking around in the dark, but Baxter ’station’ was my limit. Had I come home at night, I was going to call M to come and meet me. As I saw no ticket machine, I parked the car near a newsagents. They didn’t sell train tickets. They told me I could buy one on the train. I looked at them disbelievingly. They assured me it was true.

Thus I spent the first 15 minutes of my journey looking in vain for some kind of train conductor (a prized and rare species) who was going to sell me a ticket, until I spied the COIN ONLY ticket machine. Of course, I had nothing to feed it. Gah.

It took me the best part of the day to start wondering why I had been so fixated on Baxter, when I could have driven the same, or even less, distance and gone to Cranbourne. Yeah! Cranny! I am truly baffled by my own stupidity. Cranbourne is even on the proper suburban train line - as opposed to Baxter, where I had to travel for four or five stations on a diesel V-Lineish train and then swap at Frankston. So. Tuesday morning, it’s time for me to test out the journey to the city from Cranbourne.