‘I’ve travelled the world and seen nothing like this’: The man behind Brisbane’s most beautiful station

At the start of 2024, Queensland Rail closed Morningside Station on the Cleveland line for an upgrade, and I was obliged to shift my morning commute to Norman Park.

So one morning I marched down the long pathway, past a colourful mural of blue skies and fruit bats, and crossed under the tunnel to Platform 2.

Poking my head into the station’s waiting room, something caught my eye immediately. It was a poster for the old Marilyn Monroe movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – in German (Blondinen bevorzugt).

The entire wallspace of the room, in fact, was covered in curiosities: historical photos of trains and trams in Brisbane; a poster for the 1988 Bathurst 1000; a retro ad for Kellogg’s Banana Flakes. Artificial flowers sat in vases, cheering the space up.

Part railway museum, part garage rumpus room, it was unexpected, and utterly delightful.

Norman Park’s waiting room is like no other on Brisbane’s railway network.Credit: Markus Ravik

The next day I noticed the care with which the garden along the station’s southern slope had been tended: with bromeliads, aloe, succulents and elkhorn nailed to palm trees. An old bike and several old lawnmowers were positioned as sculptural items.

It’s safe to say that no other train station in Brisbane is so decorated and well looked after. But then, no other station has Anthony Vethecan as station master.

Today Vethecan, who celebrates ten years with Queensland Rail in June, points out to me the waiting room’s latest addition. It’s a photograph of a cable tram in Kew, Melbourne, circa 1880. Vethecan lived in Kew when he first came to Australia in 1972.

The waiting room at Norman Park Station is a mini-museum.Credit: Markus Ravik

“A lady gave it to me, saying her husband passed away, she found it under the house and she doesn’t know where to put it,” he says.

Customers give him things all the time.

“The problem is, if I don’t put it up in here, they get offended!”

Nearby is the photo of a train guard’s kit bag of the kind first issued in the 1930s. “I used to have that kit bag! It has a lamp, you’ve got flags, you’ve got detonators.”

Detonators?

“In the old days, you didn’t have [two-way] radio. So if a train is stopped at the platform, the guard walks back 100 metres, drops three detonators on the track. The next train coming behind, if the driver runs over them, he knows there’s a train in front of him.”

The station’s spacious toilet is adorned with art prints, and it is immaculate. A notice tells people not to steal the rolls of toilet paper: if they are in need of takeaways, they only have to ask at the office. (They never do.)

Murals decorating the pedestrian tunnel, like the one on the fence, were created by the local state school. If they are vandalised, Anthony sends in a report, and a retoucher comes to fix it.

Vethecan tends the garden he created at Norman Park Station.Credit: Markus Ravik

But the station’s main claim to fame is its garden. It featured in a 2018 episode of Gardening Australia, and got Vethecan a nomination for a Queensland Day Award that year.

Anthony tends it before and after his shifts, and sometimes during. “When I work on a Sunday, it’s half an hour between trains, so I come down here.”

“He’s rostered every second Sunday,” Queensland Rail’s Group Station Master, David Sturgess, explains.

“But there’s many occasions where he’ll notify me that he’s going to be in on the weekend anyway, to tidy up the garden.”

Ten years ago the garden was just dirt and a couple of boulders.

“I was getting the train early in the morning every Friday and noticed that he was making this nice garden,” recalls local resident Ruth Blair.

“I said, ‘would you like some plants?’” Two of Blair’s pink frangipanis now live in the garden in pots.

It was originally lush with flowers, but Vethecan has focused on drought-proofing the garden lately, with self-watering bromeliads.

“It’s a lovely old station, and he’s made it a beautiful space,” Blair says. “I hope to God they’re not going to upgrade it.”

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Vethecan is a dapper little man, fit and well groomed, white hair stylishly cut. You can imagine him in the role of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. He has performed, in fact, in amateur productions of The Full Monty and The Mikado, and his quickstep has won him ballroom dancing prizes.

He grew up the son of an engine driver in Kandy, the once-royal city in what used to be called Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Station masters check that passengers have entered and exited trains safely, assist disabled passengers, and help drivers keep to timetable, among other duties. Credit: Markus Ravik

“I had a privileged childhood because my dad worked in the railways. We had servants. My mother didn’t work at all, I was a boarder in a private school.”

Thousands died as a result of the 1971 insurgency in Sri Lanka, fuelling a diaspora. Vethecan decamped for Melbourne; his entire family would follow.

It was quite the culture shock. “I didn’t even know how to fry an egg. I told my mum I wanted to come back,” he laughs.

He got a job as a tram driver, then a conductor. He worked alongside Greek immigrants at the Ford Motor Company in Broadmeadows, and in payroll for government road construction, before joining VicRail as a guard and signalman.

On relocating to Brisbane he managed a supermarket in Woodridge for 13 years before joining QR as a porter on June 1, 2015. He became station master of Norman Park within a year.

“What I always try to do is encourage the station masters, and especially when they’re new, to take ownership of their station,” Sturgess says.

“When I mentioned that to Anthony, well, he took that to a whole new level.”

“I don’t like to be idle,” Vethecan says.

Over in the station’s office, one of the porters, Luka Ruckels, has good news.

“Someone left us a good review yesterday,” he says.

We gather around the computer to have a look.

“[Vethecan] was so kind and helpful in his information on travel,” the satisfied customer wrote, “and I was so, so, so super impressed with his artistic train station presentation.

“I’ve travelled the world and I’ve seen nothing like this at any train station … has already made my day this early in the day.”

Customer numbers have increased dramatically since 50¢ fares came in, Vethecan says.

“A while back I had a platform packed with people. This guy was riding his bike in between them. I said, ‘you can’t ride your bike because you could knock someone off’. He told me to ‘eff off’ and said ‘you coloured bastard’, things like that. It’s rare, but occasionally you get that.”

In the garden, facing the ramp, Vethecan has installed a sign. It says Smile and Have a Great Day.

A garden sign reminding travellers to “Smile and have a great day.”Credit: Markus Ravik

“Whenever I don’t see anyone smiling – because they never smile – I say ‘you haven’t seen my sign.’”

When I tell Vethecan that I discovered his station by accident, he says he’s heard that a lot.

“Customers from Morningside said, ‘From now on, I’m coming here. Because it’s a good feeling, walking up the ramp to see your garden. It’s very relaxing.’”

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