The prompt for Week 28 is 'Trains', and it brings back an early memory of travelling with my grandmother on holidays as a child.
Back when I was in primary school, it was a common occurrence during school holidays for my parents to send my sister or I - usually at different times - down to Melbourne to stay with our maternal grandmother, a journey of some 200km.
While staying with our grandmother at her home in Brighton, we would often take a day or two of the visit to walk to the train station and travel to Frankston where my mother's older sister lived. I don't recall ever staying with them as a separate holiday, it was always during my visit with my grandmother.
My clearest memory of the journey is the excitement of seeing the ocean from the train, kneeling on the seat to exclaim over quick glimpses and then the glorious surprise of rounding a bend to see the ocean stretched out beside the tracks, with no houses obscuring the view for a stretch of several hundred metres.
Living so far inland, I can still recall the excitement of my first clear view of the ocean from the train window, stretching away for miles to the distant horizon.
It was not just seeing the ocean that I loved. Many times during my holidays with my grandmother, we would purchase a train ticket and spend the whole day riding the trains around the city, getting off and on at random stops to explore different Melbourne suburbs.
Late in the day we would often ride the train all the way in to Flinders Street station in the city centre, the board a tram to take us home (the tram stop being much closer to my grandmother's house), buying fish and chips at a little store near her house to eat for a late supper.
These holidays were a highlight of my year and I will always remember the excitement of riding the trains with my grandmother.
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