The good, the bad and the ugly of the Werribee line

When you’re crammed nose to shoulder blade with a bunch of strangers in a commuter crush on the Werribee line, you see and hear it all. Here we share snippets of life as a daily commuter in the west.

We list some of the commuter antics you’re bound to notice on your Werribee line train at crush capacity.

Peak-hour on PTV. Just the mention of it is likely to send shudders down a Melburnians’ spine, as we reluctantly dig up repressed memories of the daily sardine-squeeze.

There’s the pushy, the smelly, the germy, and the down right rude — and as you pile onto the carriage, you almost resent those drivers stuck on the Monash and West Gate.

Even when pregnant I muscled my way through the daily headache, and was usually not granted a seat (even when my belly was poking into seated commuters’ faces).

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Like all commutes home from the city, the Werribee line is full of the good, the bad and the ugly — and here we share what it’s really like on the infamous line:

Our own Aussie patriots.

“SAVE A SEAT FOR US AUSSIES”

This is the guy proudly sporting a Southern Cross tattoo on his muscled right shoulderblade, a tattered wifebeater and grey handlebar moustache. When he boards, most seats are already taken by a diverse mix of people from different backgrounds so he crosses his arms, walking up and down the aisles demanding one of them get up. He shouts in their faces; “Oi, go get a seat in your own country, not mine”. And as everyone awkwardly stares on — no-one brave enough to actually stand up to him — he gives up and goes to the next carriage looking for his birth-right seat.

Bragging about jail time has become commonplace on the Werribee line.

“WE’RE FREE NOW. F*** YOUTH DETENTION”

If you wanna brag on the Werribee line, make sure it’s about what jail time you got, or how you managed to screw over the magistrate by “faking a story about your sick mum”.

They bitch about their Legal Aid lawyers, who couldn’t manage to get ‘em off. I mean, it was only their fifth shoplifting offence.

They talk tactics about how they’ll steal their next stash and how they’re planning on doing burnouts in front of those f***ing coppas who sent them to court in the first place. These kids really don’t care who overhears their conversations, and usually they’re in groups of three or four, off to go dunk more hoops.

Who doesn’t love eavesdropping on a train phoner?

“YES, MISSUS. I’LL PICK UP THE WINNIES ON MY WAY HOME”

Sometimes the best things you hear are overheard phone convos — the teenage girl calling her boyfriend a ‘slag off’ cause he got with her sister, but caving soon after with: “I still love ya babe”.

There’s the everyday stuff too; like what time you’re going to meet at Donut King, and what you’ll wear when you go out to the plaza or the Commercial Hotel later that night.

PDAs. Nothing new, but always awkward.

“WANT A SIP?”

Booze-fuelled PDAs from teenage couples are nothing new. It usually doesn’t matter what the weather is like outside; the girl will be sporting a loose crop top from Supre, bleached blonde hair and a few inches of black regrowth. And the guy? Trackies and a hoodie will do.

They’ll be taking up three seats, rap music from their phone blaring, arms and legs splayed out, and a brown bag of alcohol they take sips of in between their tongue pashes. One even offered me a sip of their bargain bin vodka on my way to work once, which I (kind of regretfully) declined.

The train is not your living room — stick to your seat.

“SO I NO LONGER HAVE RIGHTS AS A MAN BECAUSE OF YOUSE WOMEN?”

No, you do not have to give up your seat to women “just because you’re a man” but common decency isn’t the same as feminism.

One outraged guy actually quoted the #metoo movement when a lady politely asked him to move his backpack so she could sit down, but according to him, his right as a man (and his bag’s rights) trumped her desire to sit down.

It turned into a full-blown argument, with him screaming in her face “What, do I no longer have rights as a man because of youse women?”. Let’s just say, the man and his very tired backpack enjoyed their 40 minute commute into the city.

There’s always someone from different backgrounds on the Werribee line.

THE ‘AFRICAN’ GANGS

Yep, you guessed it. Usually there’s a group of African kids coming home from school or headed out to friends’ places on my nightly commute.

They stand out, but usually it’s because of what we’ve been told — not because of what they’re actually doing.

Most groups I’ve seen spend the journey chatting and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, which isn’t always that easy when people spend the ride staring at you, just waiting for you to create anarchy.

The white-collar types usually get on a little closer to the city.

THE INNER-CITY FOLK

They usually don’t appear until you reach North Melbourne or South Kensington stations, but there’s always hoardes of well-dressed business people who hop aboard when you get closer to the city.

They’re the lawyers, consultants and the financial advisors usually not associated with the west.

There’s the hipsters too, jumping aboard at Yarraville and Seddon with their pre-bought lattes and Birkenstocks.

See what? People reading actual tabloids are not commonplace on trains these days.

THE ANACHRONISM

Of course, the most common thing you’ll see on the train (any train) is people straining their necks to look at their phone.

YouTube, Instagram, Reddit — I’ve even see one guy looking at porn in plain view of others. But sometimes you will catch a rare glimpse of a man or woman reading an actual newspaper. They take up a bit of extra room and usually have their specs perched halfway down their nose, but all is forgiven in my eyes when someone has made the effort to buy a newspaper and be courageous enough to actually read it on their peak hour commute.

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