18 | FROM SYDNEY ON THE ILLIWARRA LINE
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SINGING THE BLUES-THE ILLIWARRA LINE
blonde chignon touching her collar)-rise as one and gaze down the track. They know the routine.
BY TOM ADAIR
The long line of carriages, now visible, snakes to a stop. It is 9.17. I walk to the front, to a section marked ‘quiet’ and choose the top level by a window on the seaward side, facing forward. The blonde sits ahead of me, opens a newspaper, switches her phone off and tackles a crossword .
In total silence, at precisely 9.23 the train begins its 80 mile journey, a weekend escape to the Southern Coast with its promise of sand and a weekend of jazz in the little Shangri-la town of Kiama. This is the final leg of my east coast Aussie adventure, begun north of Brisbane-a surfeit of pleasures-which, despite the small intervention of a cyclone, has been as smooth as a vintage Hunter Valley Shiraz.
SYDNEY sunlight gleams from the rails. At Central Station, at 9.15 on an early-March morning, platform 8 is disturbingly quiet. No sign of the 9.23 to Kiama.
I drop my rucksack on a bench, and as
I sit, three men-and a woman (in heels and business suit, her hair a perfect
Costing only 9 Aussie dollars, (less than £5), the two hour train ride is just the right length: neither short nor long, neither fast nor slow. And the seats are perfect for leg-room and comfort. I idly picture my blonde fellow passenger as Goldilocks, taking a ride to a different nursery rhyme, the men in some other carriage perhaps the three bears. After Redfern, our speed increases; I glimpse yachts-stuck like toy boats in a placid river. But I am hoping for the ocean. Perhaps kangaroo. Instead there are horses, a distant pony, fast-moving roof tops. Both sides of the track are smothered with trees, and beyond them, hillsides mottled with hints of autumn gold. Sometimes we seem to ride above them,
sometimes they
tower, or split into vistas of distant meadow. Plunged in darkness, we enter a tunnel, and when we exit the carriage blazes with sudden light. It’s the turquoise ocean! A great unfurling, crashing its
November/December 2025
waves on an empty beach. The Illiwarra Line is one of Australia’s
joys. Fulfilling our longing for proximity to the sea-the restless maw perhaps of our origin as a species-it threads the commuter belt, passing townships that thin and grow smaller. And once after Wollongong, and the inlet of Cabbage Tree Creek, the names of its halts become poetic: Unanderra, Kembla- Grange, Dapto, Oak Flats, Shellharbour Junction,
Bombo, and
finally, Kiama, this last a long established seaside town, bringing balm to frazzled workers and to their
families here for
escape. We arrive at ten minutes to midday. Goldilocks smiles as I step aside. No sign of the bears. The slightly elevated station enjoys a pleasant view of rooftops set back from the harbour. The front curves gently, lined by a grove of Norfolk Pines, and then farther still a series of headlands dips into ocean. Down Railway Parade I head into
Terralong Street, past a pie shop. No sign at all of the Sebel Kiama, my digs for two nights which I’ve been assured is ‘a coastal getaway overlooking Kiama Harbour’.
I scan the curved terraces, the neatly nestled houses facing the water across which surfers are languidly paddling.
The
tide is listless. “Perhaps I can help you, sir?”
comes
a voice from somewhere behind.
My
guardian angel is the server at Native Café. She comes to the doorway. “Just head down Shoalhaven Street.”
She
points me towards the headland.
“Go
up the hill; it’s on your left.” Five minutes later I am
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