Unless you live in the western suburbs (note: for non-Perthians, that is the rich ‘hood) and the police give you a free pass to down two bottles of red and drive home in the BMW your parents gifted you at graduation, then getting home from Perth CBD after a night out can be a bit of a pain. The few buses that run at around midnight (yes, that is when my city tends to call it a night) become lurching puke blimps, filled with under-aged party-goers who are as good at holding drinks as they are at not being unbearable arses. Perth’s taxis run an extortion racket, picking off suckers who miss the last trains out of town and charging them $50 for a ride that would be $4 by train. So unless you have that kind of mad fliff to throw away, you’re probably one of the many desperadoes sprinting to the station to get on your Transperth depression-wagon back home.
So here is my simple guide to Perth’s train-lines for you t’other-siders.
The Fremantle Line:
The Freo line is my ride home, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours on it contemplating my existence and regretting most of the actions of my night out. It used to have an incredibly bad reputation – they even made a movie about it called Last Train to Freo that suggested the train was solely occupied by conniving thugs and “stab-happy” lunatics. And that was largely true, until the great wave of gentrification took hold. Fremantle is now a European backpacker squat, filled with French, German and Irish neo-hippies in their early 30s who travel far abroad to forget the fact that their greatest life achievement is coming third in an ultimate Frisbee tournament. On top of that, Freo is a town renowned for its eccentrics, so the remaining quasi-crims and hobos have a certain Steinbeckian quality to them – playing spoons and discussing how they are the avenging hand of God etc. The Fremantle line has begun to resemble the hull of a late 19th century passenger ship, full of fiddling Irish families, quasi-intellectual European sleazebags, and cordial hobos who will hambone a ditty for a sandwich.
The Midland Line:
Last Train to Midland would be a chilling psychological thriller in the style of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, where you are the Kyle MacLachlan character slowly losing your grip on reality while everyone else on-board is a terrifying Dennis Hopper type only a thousand times worse and a million times more “stab happy” than a champion knife fighter with a shiv collection in San Quentin. I catch this train at midday on Saturday to visit the missus and even then it is fucking terrifying. The only way to take your mind off the 14 year old bonking seniors’ heads with a sock full of batteries is to eavesdrop on the morbidly fascinating conversations, such as “Did you hear Terry’s second husband Mick just committed suicide by putting his head in their wood chipper” and “If that fuckin’ cunt wants to sue me, then let the bitch cos I’ll slit her throat with a JB Hi Fi gift card” and “No twelve year old daughter of mine is running off with my man”.
The Armadale Line:
This line is a kitchen sink drama minus the familial empathy. The mind-melting isolation that I always feel when riding it is only off-balanced by the certain knowledge that I am safer on the train that off it. The best thing to do is adopt a thousand yard stare and not acknowledge the existence of anything or anyone – even yourself. Anaesthetising yourself emotionally will help you stay sane as you sit across from the guy singing a violently spastic rendition of the Around the Twist theme, while carving a concentric circle in his chest with his uncle’s bayonet.
The Mandurah Line:
Mandurah is so boring and filled with boat-owning middle aged English that even Perth’s most scene stealing schizophrenic won’t bother with it.
GENERAL TIPS:
Transperth Guards: With their charming mix of bureaucratic cold-heartedness and “turn the other cheek” negligence, Transperth guards aren’t to be relied on. If another passenger begins to elbow you in the face, their general strategy is to kick BOTH of you off at the next stop, where you can continue your “conversation” in private.
No ticket: If for some reason you got on without a ticket or – worse yet – got on with the wrong ticket, then you can expect a $150 fine (Perth runs on fines). I have gotten out of this in the past by impersonating a charmingly hapless Canadian tourist who had no idea that it’s two zones from Perth to Fremantle. Everyone trust Canadians!
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