Train Spotting at The End of the Year.

Months ago, excited by the possibility of a Christmas with all the family, we booked a unit in Victor Harbor in order to have somewhere to celebrate without imposing on our house owners' trust by bringing the whole family to their home, and for the younger generation to have a little space from us old fogeys with our habit of getting up at disgustingly early hours of the morning. The unit worked perfectly with the exception of a few windowless rooms, a few switches which didn't appear to operate anything, and a bathroom exhaust fan which turned off and on its own schedule. Not only did the unit work perfectly but it came with the bonus of being very close to the train line into Victor Harbor. The train line was only used for tourist trains and wouldn't you know it, over the Christmas/New Year period twelve tourist trains ran past our balcony every day and every one of those was a steam train.

Not only did the train steam past our balcony on its way to the station, but having delivered the passengers safely to the platform the engine reversed back past our unit and then chugged forward so close to the balcony that we could have handed Christmas chocolates to the firemen, had we been inclined to share. While we craned our necks to watch the locomotive did an about-face on an ancient turntable, passed us again, reversed back up the the train, and then laboured past loaded down with a new crowd of tourists bound for Goolwa. In case you lost count, that was six passes for every train. For a family of train happy shutterbugs, this was heaven. For those who married into the family... possibly heaven. Maybe.

I took a lot of train photos.  Then I loaned my camera to my son, and he took a lot of train photos.

The old turntable displaying maximum trust in the (volunteer) driver's ability to eyeball the end of the rails.

Arriving in Victor Harbor, our block of units in the background.

The crossing near the turntable was guarded by blue sheep with evil yellow eyes.

The level crossing near the Victor Harbor railway station is managed by two manually operated wooden gates, which a high-vis man swings across the road to block traffic when the train leaves or enters the station.  The man is not in a hurry, and the whole process unfolds at a leisurely pace.

And off it goes...

Some of us caught the train from Victor Harbor to Goolwa and met the rest of us at the other end for op-shopping and quality-testing Goolwa's cafe selection.

The clouds all went away and the sun shone brightly for their train ride.  They had a nice carriage too, and everyone was very satisfied with their adventure.

Not a steam train, but deemed photo-worthy anyway.

 

 

 

My son and I found a spindly structure beside the railway line. It didn't have a ladder but that didn't deter us. We climbed up anyway and set up our cameras facing the direction from which we expected the train, lamenting all the while that the wind would blow the sound of its coming away. Then we heard a train whistle from behind us and had an unseemly scramble to turn around because we had somehow missed the first entire train and it was coming while we still thought it was going and had sneaked up behind us.

Lucky for us the wind blew the sound to us, and we had time to watch the train make its way along the sand dunes above the beach.

Here it comes,

...and there it goes, off to Goolwa.

The regular passing of the train give us all a chance to hone our train-waving skills, the aim of the game being to get people on the train to wave back. Children and grandparents were easy pickings: sometimes they were waving even before they saw us. Grown ups were more difficult and lovey-dovey couples were so focused on themselves that they struggled to acknowledge idiots in Christmas t-shirts jumping up and down on balconies and waving like windmills. The hardest nuts to crack were teenagers, resolutely not being excited by their steam train adventure and way too cool to wave or crack a smile.

The train operators were concentrating too hard for frivolous waving.  Train driving is serious business.

The train spectators, on the other hand, were thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Of course we didn't spend the whole time lolling about on the balcony drinking coffee and trying to get teenagers to wave to us.  Oh no, we wandered up the street to the markets and the carnival, rode a Big Wheel, and discovered our violent and competitive natures on the Dodgems.

It was higher than it looked.  Two of us declined to risk life and limb and stayed firmly on solid ground, minding the belongings of those that went aloft.

Don't be fooled by the peaceful setting.  This was war.

We saw the New Year in from our balcony, watching the fireworks in downtown Victor Harbor.  Then we saw it in again by watching the Goolwa fireworks, visible in the distance over the headland.  Goolwa may or may not have been the brunt of unkind jokes about the necessity of getting with the program when it came to ringing in the New Year on time.

In the early hours of 2024 we trundled home, fed the animals, and went to bed.