Ciao Team Dusty!

Spring has arrived in Australia. Such joy! Bunches of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and sweet peas adorn the city flower stalls. Fluffy golden blossoms festoon wattle trees everywhere. In the Yarra Valley, enchanting avenues of cherry blossoms attract many visitors. Through my wall-wide windows I watch the wattlebird hopping along my balcony rail.

The balcony bathed in spring sunshine invites me to ... Continue Reading

I’m talking trams again! From a 15-year-old tram driver in my last post to a royal tram driver in this post. The year after the teenager hijacked a tram, a famous Royal took a Melbourne tram for a ride. Mary Donaldson did not have to resort to hijacking; the restored SW6 class tram number 965 that she drove was a wedding gift from the people of Victoria to her and her husband, HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The Danish royal couple drove the tram from the Danish Tramway Museum depot to the terminus. Now, this Melbourne tram, blessed by royalty, brings delight to visitors of the Danish Tramway Museum (Sporvejsmuseet Skjoldenæsholm).

In 2018 another royal couple rode on a Melbourne tram. This time it was the English royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle who took the number one tram to South Melbourne Beach. Dusty commented on this in Murder on a Melbourne Tram when the ‘green and yellow tram carrying commuters to their city offices rattled along the tracks’ in front of Villa Depaul, a luxury chateau in a five-hectare landscaped park, where she and Sean were staying.

And then there’s Rock and Roll Royalty. Melbournians will be aware of a world-famous music legend who was also besotted with our trams. So taken was Elton John that during a visit to Melbourne in 1983 he bought one of the iconic W-class trams, had it shipped to the UK and installed it in his garden at his estate in Berkshire.

Our trams are much-loved. Songs have even been written about individual Melbourne trams, Danes love the Melbourne trams, Bill Bailey’s eyes light up at the sight of a Melbourne tram and Brigid George wrote a book called Murder on a Melbourne Tram. All aboard the Melbourne tram!

Image: SW6 number 965 on its first test run in the snow at the Danish Tramway Museum, February 2006. Photograph courtesy Morton E. Storgaard. Reprinted with kind permission from Mikael Lund, Chairman of the Danish Tramway Museum. Thanks also to Warren Doubleday, Collections Manager, Melbourne Tram Museum Inc.

I wrote Murder on a Melbourne Tram during the Covid years when we were restricted in our movements. It became the first Dusty Kent novel where I did not travel to the setting. I was already here in Melbourne and a regular tram traveller.

We love our trams here in Melbourne. Some love them even more than others. For example, in April 2005 a 15-year-old boy was so besotted with trams that he hopped in the driver seat of a C-class in the South Melbourne depot and off he went; past Luna Park in St Kilda, through Malvern and Kooyong and up along Glenferrie Road.

Amazingly, along the way, he stopped to pick up and set down passengers. His passengers were blissfully unaware that their tram was being driven by a completely untrained amateur who didn’t even qualify for a driver’s licence. The teenager was able to execute the difficult braking system correctly and even expertly changed the points on the track. (This involves getting out of the tram and using a long piece of steel pipe to pull a lever across.)

His joyride came to an abrupt end in Kew where he was met with a police armed-response team in eight cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring. His passengers objected to his arrest and praised his driving skills. No-one was hurt during the escapade — unlike in Murder on a Melbourne Tram where a dead body was discovered on a tram.