TRAIN:

AS the trio of travellers went our separate ways from the Addy office, the first decision of my journey was how to get to the train station.

Walking in the dark through the CBD didn’t appeal for safety reasons and free parking at the station made driving the obvious choice.

Finding a park at that hour of the morning was a breeze, but as fellow commuters would go on to tell me, an hour later and it’s a different story.

The well-positioned Myki machine was a much-needed reminder to tap on before my journey.

Platform 1 was busy with commuters standing in silence looking from their phones, to the electronic clock, to the tracks, and back again.

I boarded the 6.16am train with ease and picked a forward-facing seat.

It wasn’t an official “quiet carriage”, but there was still silence — but for one woman who blew her nose with a special kind of enthusiasm.

Some passengers slept, many had headphones in and one woman skilfully applied her makeup.

The temperature was pleasant, surroundings clean and people kept their personal belongings neatly in their own area.

The Portarlington woman who sat next to me had recently switched to train travel after six months using the ferry. The time of the one service offering didn’t quite suit her work hours and she preferred the flexibility that V/Line provided.

She and her family relocated to the Bellarine Peninsula from Melbourne in large part to escape the traffic and if it wasn’t for the fact she enjoys her job — and works only three days a week — she would have tried to gain employment closer to home to avoid the commute.

At Lara, two people took up the remaining seats in my section of four.

The mother and son duo, I discovered, work in North Melbourne and travel from their respective homes in Belmont and Hamlyn Heights to park at Lara where the fare is cheaper — even when you factor in petrol to get there.

Morning services, they say, are generally more reliable with a well behaved crowd.

A surge of people boarding at Tarneit and Wyndham Vale meant the rest of the seats filled, with the overflow forced to stand by the door.

The first stop that prompted a mass exodus was Footscray before the train eventually pulled into platform 8 South at Southern Cross station three minutes ahead of schedule at 7.18am.

The most stressful part of my journey was trying to get through the turnstiles, unknowingly scanning my Geelong Addy building pass instead of my Myki much to the disgust of the impatient man behind me who grunted, reached across and swiped the both of us through.

The sight of people crammed on the tram made it an easy decision to walk the 1.2km to our meeting place at the GPO before arriving first and treating myself to a winner’s coffee.