Film - 'Myths & Rumours: Maryborough Railway', 2011, Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society

Glenda James: There's lots of myths around about this station.

A lot of local people still believe it was meant for Maryborough in Queensland.

Doreen Green: Yeah, someone said, 'Oh, it was... a mistake.'

Wendy Jacobs: Well, it is a really large station for what seems to be now quite a small town.

Betty Osborn: When people saw Maryborough Station, and Spencer Street which was very ordinary, they said, 'Oh, the magnificent one should've been in the city - not in the country.'

Greg Waters: But that's not right. The reason they built this place here, is because this was going to be the centre of a big rail industry.

Wendy: This was a gold town and the whole of Victoria was booming in the 1880s, and they had what they called the Octopus Act in the railways which was a huge network of railways right across the State to link everything up.

It was very political - everyone was trying to get a railway in their town. And I think they just had great visions of this becoming the centre of railways, like the big railway towns in London.

Greg: This Maryborough Railway Station was exciting, it had people everywhere. It had a big staff here on the station. And we had about 150 people working down the locos, and it consisted of fitters, boilermakers and assistant mates, and then it was made up of the Ways and Works Branch - they were loading parcels and goods that would come in.

And then they used to have the gangers. One gang'd go out to Talbot, one gang'd be working on the Avoca line, one gang'd be working on the Castlemaine line and one gang'd be working on the Mildura-Donald line.

So, overall, it'd be over 1,000-odd people working there.

Wendy: The building was built by Swanston Builders from St Kilda in Melbourne, and the architects were the Victorian Railway architects. The building was quite expensivefor the time - it cost £22,000 which was a lot of money in those days.

The features that make this a Queen Anne Revival building are the flat gables with the curved arches and the polygonal spire with the cupola top and the red-face brick with the plaster strapping on it. It's quite an early use of the terracotta across the top of the ridges on the slate roof. Also, the very tall, polygonal brick chimneys with the pronounced capping.

The other amazing thing about this building is the huge canopy, there's no other ones in Victoria which had this long skylight through the middle which makes it so much lighter and brighter, and it's a very deep canopy. Without the skylight, it'd be very dark under here, and it is wonderful with all its detailing. It's really one of the major features of the whole station.

Glenda: This main hall was the formal dining room in the, um, late 1800s and early 1900s, and there was silver service in this room. The long room was the refreshment room. There's French doors all along there that opened out onto the platform. A bar ran the full length of that room, and that was more sort of stand-up and fast-turnover eating area.

Betty: The station is magnificent inside with the beautiful ticket boxes. The flooring was doneby Cawkwell's of Melbourne.

Reg Carr: The building itself is unique.

I love the telegraph room because in my day, to become a stationmaster, you had to have a telegraph certificate, and, uh... it was just the romance of it, I think.

Alan Kenly: I can remember riding my bicycle to work, two o'clock in the morning,and the station was floodlit and it looked absolutely magnificent.

Beautiful.

Wendy: It's comparable to some of the other bigger ones in Victoria such as Ballarat, which is a completely different style - far more Victorian - or Flinders Street Station in the centre of Melbourne, which is ten years later and, um...10-20 years later - and far more Edwardian in style - so I think it's unique and it's beautiful.

Betty: One of the first famous visitors was Mark Twain, and he arrived in 1895.

But he didn't say that Maryborough was a railway station with a town attached -he said, 'You can put the whole population of Maryborough into it with a sofa apiece and have room for more.'

Wendy: It certainly reflects the wealth of the area and what they perceived - that wealth just going on endlessly, that the gold was in the ground,they were going to keep digging it up.

Film - 'Reminiscences: Maryborough Railway Station', 2011, Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society

Betty Osborn: I suppose one of the most famous visitors was Madame Melba. And she loved walking. And she walked all the way down from her hotel in the centre of Maryborough to the railway station when she was leaving after her concert.

And when she was there, the ladies of the town were gathered around to farewell her, but then this rather tousled little young fellow raced up to Madame Melba and presented her with a bunch of flowers.

And everyone was quite horrified. But Melba, very composed, asked for his name and address, and thanked him. And so the newspaper said he rose higher then than his status as apprentice to a saveloy merchant.

Doreen Green: My father joined up and went overseas in World War I, left behind a wife and six children. He eventually got home, and a good friend of his was the local bandmaster.

And he marched the band up from the band hall. And everybody he met, 'Come on, come on, Archie's coming home!' Archie Mason's coming home.

By the time he got to the station, there was a crowd. Besides the ones from out of town where Dad lived.

And Mum said, 'The station platform was crowded!'

I looked at her and I said, 'Mum, the local station platform is...'I knew how long it was. It was a long station platform.

She looked at me, and Mum was very dignified and very much in control,and she said, 'I have spoken.'

(Laughs)

I said, 'Sorry, dear.' She said, 'It was crowded.'

Packed.

Alan Kenly: In 1947, I was transferred to Donald from Melbourne for the wheat season.

And I... We stopped at Maryborough on our way to Donald. And it was at midnight, virtually, New Year's Eve and there was a piper, a Scotchman playing the pipes, walking up and down the platform.

Reg Carr: When they had the 100 years of trains, I was stationmaster at the time and Mr Gibbs was the chairman and he hosted a dinner at Maryborough. And we had it on the old station restaurant. And it was rather unique. The whole dinner was cooked on the original stove.

Before the dinner, about 48 hours before, I had my boys stoke it up,the fireplace. Because Maryborough was open all night and there was staff all night, they used to go in and stoke the stove. So when the ladies come to cook, they did a three-course dinner and it was rather unique to see it cooked on the old stove. And it was cooked perfectly.

Betty: During the Depression years, a lot of young people, a lot of young men, would jump the rattler.

In other words, they would climb onto the trains to get to a regional town, so that they could get food vouchers. They only lasted a week so therefore they tended to go from one place to another. And they used to jump off just before the station at Maryborough and then they'd go and they'd sit under the peppercorn trees in the stationmaster's yard.

He had a house just in front of the station. And there they would tidy themselves up before they'd go down to the town and then cadge other food or work or whatever they could.

Greg Waters: We had some great fun when I was a kid, because we used to come down here and play in the yards and we'd go down the loco and we'd play.

And as I was telling you before about the bridge that was over the end up at the Carisbrook end, we'd get up to the top there, and of course, the engines would go backwards and forwards shunting and they'd be blowing this black smoke up, up like that.

And, of course, you'd have shorts on, and the black smoke used to go up the leg of your pants and around your undies and... (Laughs)

Oh, we used to... Then we'd try and drop stones down through the funnel of the engine.

Then the trains going up the hill on the Ballarat line... They used to go out slowly, you see, and we'd be down the bottom so we'd get on the back of the guard's van and the guard wouldn't know that we were there and we'd ride up to the top of the hill on the back of the guard's van and as soon as it started to gain speed to go over the hill, we would jump off then walk home again, yeah.

Oh, but we had a lot of fun. It was great.

Great back in those days.

Alan: And the other funny little thing, was one evening the train from Melbourne via Ballarat came in.

It was a railmotor. After it went, I had the little lady and her partner came in and they wanted to see me. They had a delicate matter to discuss.

And I said, 'What's your problem?'

And they said... She said, 'I went to the toilet and I got my powder...' She said, 'I was doing my face and the draft from the toilet came up and it took my roll of $20 notes down through the loo, the chute.' The chute, of course, in those days went straight onto the track, the permanent way.

And she said, 'Oh, I don't know what... Could you arrange for someone to have a look and see if it's still on the track?'

I said, 'Oh, yeah. No problem.'

So I rang the stationmaster at Clunes, 'cause I knew he was an exercise bug and he used to take a jog every evening.

And I said, 'Well, tonight go for your jog along the track there and see if you can see a roll of $20 bills.'

Anyway, next morning when I went to work there was a value for me, which is, you'd say a registered letter from Clunes to me.

And in it had the roll of $20 notes.

Well, after I'd finished the morning passenger trains, I went up to the ladies' house and they were just getting out of bed, it was about 9:30, and I presented them with their money and they were very, very happy.