Sunday Blog 250 – 13th September 2026
This week, my four sisters went up to Kalgoorlie on a reminiscence tour. We lived there from 1965 to 1968. I had planned to go as well, but a last-minute change in work commitments meant I had to stay home, Cinderella-like, sweeping up the workplace hearth cinders while they swanned about the goldfields. It’s times like these that I realise my bohemian, transition to retirement plans are not always progressing in line with my expectations.
Perhaps to exacerbate my melancholy, I ferried a couple of my sisters to the East Perth station to catch their train, The Prospector. I then headed to my platform to continue my journey in the opposite direction, into the CBD.
All this week while my sisters were away, I was assailed by memories not of the Kalgoorlie home; I was only eight months old when we arrived and three when we left; but images of our permanent childhood home in Scarborough. A flash of the kitchen area as it used to be. The back yard before the dining room extension was built in 1975. See for example the image top left of we sisters in 1971. I’m the youngest one clutching the book.
As I waited for my train to the CBD on the opposite platform, I had a good view of their Prospector train ready to depart in about a quarter of an hour. Should I take a picture of it? That’s exactly the sort of thing my mother would do; take a photo of a plane or train that had no significance, other than someone she loved was on it, outward bound. Documenting partings and reunions.
Note as evidence the image she took of me aboard the Indian Pacific train in May 1990. I was headed to London via an overland train trip to Sydney. Not pictured; Mum running alongside the platform as the Indian Pacific picked up speed and we waved and waved until she fell out of sight. Neither of us knew my two-year sojourn to London would balloon out into a decade.
So I walked down the platform to get a close enough image, and I took the pointless photo of the train because Mum couldn’t, then I boarded my train to work.