Pierre Bonnard and a train ride

 

It was Judi’s birthday this week and as a treat she wanted to go to the Pierre Bonnard exhibition at the NGV.

Normally to do this we would have driven to the city, stayed in a hotel, gone to the exhibition, had dinner out and driven back the next day.

Now, when Judi had had her shoulder operated on the Christmas before last we had discovered that there were a couple of serviced apartments you could rent short term in an apartment block opposite Hampton station from the company that managed the block.

Designed for business people who needed a short term base, it had free parking, good internet and was close to some pretty decent restaurants. 

In fact, it was such a good location, we’ve used the apartments a few times since as a place to stay when visiting Melbourne, as we would leave the car in the apartment car park and use a Metro train to get up to the city.

Since then the state government has capped the maximum fare payable on country trains at $10 – or in our case, as we have seniors’ cards these days, half that at $5 – meaning that it would cost us $20 for a return journey for the two of us as opposed to over a hundred last time we took a train back during the pandemic.

In fact at $20 it was less than the cost of road tolls, let alone the cost of petrol.

The only problem is that Beechworth hasn’t seen a train service since 1975, but on weekdays V/line provide a coach service to Wangaratta station as a replacement for the now vanished train service, and the coach trip forms part of your journey, you don’t pay for the bus and the train separately.

So, we decided to try using V/line.

The bus was a standard long distance V/line bus, as always slightly cramped, but clean and well maintained, with comfortable seats – absolutely fine for the 45 minute ride to the train station.

The train was one of the new long distance standard gauge V/locity trains. Originally they had had first and second class seating, but when they cut the ticket prices they discontinued first class. However, if you prebook seating online you get a seat in the old and slightly more roomy first class coaches at the front of the train.

The train was busy, and we were clearly having a Ryanair moment – when Ryanair started flying in Europe, suddenly lots of people who rarely flew started flying, and were not quite sure about how things worked, what you did with your bags, etc, etc.

Same with V/line – some people clearly didn’t quite get that if you had a prebooked seat you were meant to sit in it, not someone else’s, and that if your bag didn’t fit in the overhead rack, it had to go in a luggage area at the end of the train car.

However, it all worked out and everyone got there in the end.

The train was noticeably smoother and faster than the old locomotive hauled service at got us to Southern Cross more or less on time.

Then a hop up and across to the Metro train part of the station and then off on a Metro train to Hampton – not quite true, Sandringham line trains go from Flinders street, meaning a short ride between the two stations to change trains, but with escalators on the platforms changing trains was not a drama.

Dinner at a Thai restaurant that night and then a trip to see the Bonnard exhibition – many of the works on show feature in the Wikipedia article on him – followed by some shopping and city things.

One thing which isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article was Bonnard's use of photography to capture street scenes and scenes of family life, and then using these images as the basis for his artworks. Given my interest in early photography and the impact that the 1885 Box Brownie and similar cameras on people's lives I found this particularly interesting. 

For example Kodak cameras are mentioned in Dracula along with typewriters as a way of signalling the modernity of the investigators. Much as phone cameras have done, these quite basic early cameras changed the way people saw the world by bringing relatively cheap and easy photography within reach of the middle classes. 

And then we went shopping - not seriously but I did make one mistake while we were out in the city - I wanted a coffee and inadvertantly chose a café next to an art supplies store - possibly was possibly not my best choice, as of course the resident artist took it as an opportunity to browse the paints brushes and papers.

Dinner that night was at Il Forno – a really nice traditional friendly Italian restaurant in Hampton, and the train back the next morning, followed by a bus back to Beechworth.

Certainly, we would do it again, and certainly much less tiring and cheaper than driving. As always the problem is that V/line don’t have enough trains to allow a faster and more frequent service, and  of course you can only do this during the week – the weekend coach services are so attenuated that you can’t manage a trip without either a long wait – nearly three hours - at Wangaratta, or paying extra to travel on the NSW trains XPT, which kind of negates the advantage of the cheap fares in Victoria - $47 rather than $10 for a standard ticket, and remember that you would have to pay for the bus as a separate ride, making it more like $60 a head, meaning that if there are two of you, you might as well drive.

Nevertheless the capped $10 fare is a good thing, making what was previously unaffordable affordable.