Jeremy Chrimes

Melbourne based Software Engineer

Category: Public Transport

  • Randomly taking a V/Line

    Randomly taking a V/Line

    This post was written Thursday 2 January 2025 but was not posted at the time.

    It is the first “non hangover” day of 2024 2025, and I decided that I wanted to do some fun things. Mum and my sister were going to a musical and wanted to see Robbie Williams who was doing a performance in Melbourne Federation Square. 

    I took the train into the city with them having had slept in till roughly 1pm. I was super tired after the cricket and having gone to a New Years Party at a friends place. 

    Once I got into the city I got myself a can of diet coke and went to the narrm ngarrgu library in Central. This is a cool spot. 

    I then walked back to Melbourne Central did not feel like doing anything so just sat on my laptop for 20 min whilst having a Boost Juice.  

    I then decided lets get on a train somewhere. I will often use the Metro so I decided that it would be fun to go to somewhere on V/Line. It was getting slightly late so I didn’t want to go to far from Central. I decided that for my needs the Geelong Line was the best. 

    This week, so that the Metro Tunnel can be tested the Pakenham / Cranbourne / Sunbury lines are shut. This meant that from Melbourne Central Station, I had to get at Cragieburn Line to North Melbourne and then a Werribee Line train to Footscray. But then I got on a train towards Waurn Ponds. 

    I was initially planning to get of at Wyndham Vale, but I found out that I could have 10 minutes at Little River. 

    Little River is almost a polar opposite of Wyndham Vale, for starters Little River is a Blue Brick building and Wyndham Vale is the busiest regional station in the state. 

    It is a very very pretty station and to be honest the Bluestone structure. In order to get to the city bound platform you need to cross the tracks at a level crossing that makes running late to this station incredibly tricky especially on the city bound tracks. There was a beware of snakes warning as well letting you know that you are indeed outside of Melbourne in Regional Victoria.

    Beware at snakes from Little River with a grassy yellow background on a fence protecting the railway line.
    The view from North Melbourne station over looking the Melbourne Eye ferris wheel.
    Jeremy wearing a grey t-shirt ad cream coloured hat with black band and sunglasses doing a peace sign.

    The train back to Melbourne was relatively good. I sat on my MacBook Air and did some writing and read some things about tailwind. I think I am starting to quite like Tailwind. I know it is not a full design system and that I will probably need to get Tailwind UI if that is something that I am looking at doing in the future but I think that it is a really good platform. 

    Once arriving back in Melbourne it was about 20:05. I saw that the next train to Glen Waverley was at 20:30 and I decided that would be the best way to get home. I could meet dad at Syndal Station and mum and Anna shouldn’t yet be finished with the musical that they were going to Dear Even Hanson. 

    Dad met me about 5 min after I arrived. We went to Nando’s for dinner but they took a very long time to make dad’s food. I think it took them something like 40 min. Like mum and Anna’s performance had finished before dads food was served. 

    We then drove home.

    When mum got home she showed us photos of the Robbie Williams performance that she’d seen and we watched the ABC late news so that she could see the TV footage of it. 

    I finished of my diary for the day and then finished of writing this journal entry in more of a blog form though it may not be published.

    (September 2025 Jeremy – I published it 😉

  • School Holiday Diary: Arden St / Melbourne Zoo

    Hey today I am going to be blogging about. Transport in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. In the morning I did not wake up to my alarm clock. Tried to have breakfast but we did not have any milk and the bagels were all mouldy.

    Left home at about 1005 hours and walked down to Warrigal Rd and waited 30 minutes for a bus. The even worse thing was that it was along the 903 Smartbus a route that is meant to have busses running every 15 minutes. SCREW YOU TRANSDEV MELBOURNE!!! I ended up arriving at Oakleigh at 1100 hours. I got on a train to Southern Cross where I would have to change for a Werribee train to go to North Melbourne. When I got of I had to look at the offline map of Melbourne that I  had on my phone.

    I met mum at the Arden Street oval. It is a local football oval that the North Melbourne football club use for training. The main reason that I went was to pick up the membership scarf for my family. The open training session was a bonus. My sister took photos of her and about half of the side.

    As suggested by my brother we went to the zoo afterwards. So yet again I was on a Comeng up the Upfield line (Bit of a tongue twister).

    We had rice for lunch near the elephant paddock. My sister wanted to see all the animals that were in Madagascar.

    Because I hate Comengs I decided to ride a B-class tram down the 55 route.

    I got on the train to go home to find that all platforms in the loop were stuffed but the one that the Pakenham/Cranbourne line runs on.

    Once I got to Oakleigh I was surprised that the bus that arrived was my favourite one on TRANSDEV. It is a volgren that they inherited from Invicta.