I think people assumed I was doing a bit when I turned into a Metro Tunnel-head.
Overnight, my Instagram Stories went from pictures of my cat, pub dinners and movies I was recommending to a site of updates and exclamation marks counting down the days until the new massive infrastructure project opened to Melbourne commuters, allowing me to zip from suburbs buttressing one end of the city to those on the other end.
My sister called, passing on the question her husband had asked: “Are trains a new thing you’re into?” “How did you become a trains ambassador? I have so many questions,” another friend asked. Some people assumed I was some kind of paid operative for the Allan government, as if my enthusiasm was suspicious and not the obvious reaction to shiny new stations and efficient signage choices to direct people through them.
What they didn’t know was that the public soft launch this past Sunday – a day I’d marked in my Google calendar weeks earlier – had been the culmination of years of curiosity, disruptions and breathless governmental updates I’d followed closely for what felt like forever.
‘I’d lived so many lives while this thing was built!’ Brodie Lancaster at the opening of Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel. Photograph: Brodie Lancaster
When the Andrews government first broke ground on the Metro Tunnel, I was 27. By the time I hopped on to the train on Sunday, I was closer to 36. I’d lived so many lives while this thing was built! In 2019, when there was a public competition to name the machines that would dig all the dirt out of the tunnel’s route, I tried unsuccessfully to rally my Facebook friends (I still used Facebook then!) to submit my name, because I thought the words “boring machine” were funny and I wanted to be one.
Those machines – eventually named after actual famous people – worked for years while we collectively hibernated during lockdowns. By the time we emerged into a city that had “opened up” on paper in 2021, so much of it was still closed off behind construction hoardings. The tram stop on Collins Street was closed, and my beloved Sticky Institute was turfed out of the spot in Campbell Arcade where it had sold zines for 21 years. So many things went out of commission over the past eight years to build this thing that I’d mostly forgotten Fed Square even had a visitor centre. You don’t really care about functional, uncool, banal landmarks until they’re swallowed up for almost a decade.
Melbourne might not have an airport train but now we’ve got really long escalators and gargantuan Patricia Piccinini artworks to call our own
After eight years, $15bn and endless disruptions, seeing people flooding the new platforms felt like a true reopening of the city.
While some train enthusiasts reading this might be outraged to know I’d never heard the word “gunzel” until this past weekend, I joined them – and thousands more regular local stickybeaks – in riding along the new path. We took photos, some people clapped when doors opened and closed, I claimed as much free swag (namely a themed newspaper, cookie, lollipop and dinky little flag to wave) as I could carry. We come to this place for magic. And for merch.
In regular life, people who try to shove their way on to public transport before waiting for people to disembark are my mortal enemies. On this day, we were all united. I understood their eagerness! (But, in future, let’s all try a bit harder to wait a sec, shall we?)
Passengers have their photo taken on the opening day of the Metro Tunnel in Melbourne on Sunday. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock
The stations look pretty standard, unlike those on the stately old City Loop. Where Melbourne Central has shiny red tile and parliament is all 80s steel and Southern Cross is a sensory nightmare full of spontaneous wind storms, the new stations are aesthetically almost identical. I’ve looked enviously at the Sydney Metro, with its towering mosaics and space-age ceilings. Melbourne might not have an airport train but now we’ve got really long escalators and gargantuan Patricia Piccinini artworks to call our own. And that’s something to celebrate.
I didn’t live in Melbourne when the City Loop opened back in 1985. It would be five years before I was born, then another 18 before Melbourne became my adopted home. That first year living here, I took hours-long train trips from my northern suburbs home to Frankston, just to go op-shopping. I rode laps of the City Circle tram between uni classes to kill time and learn the CBD’s landmarks. Even today, I’ve been known to derail conversations with impassioned speeches about the best bus route in town. (The 246, for those of you wondering.) I’ve realised, this week, that there has been a gunzel hiding inside of me all this time. It just took five zippy new landmarks to bring her out.
