Visiting Ballarat

Travelling on Victorian country trains (V/line) is always vastly more pleasant than travelling on their metropolitan counterparts. But it isn't only a matter of more comfortable seating and better behaved passengers. Rather than have trench-coated ticket inspectors and armed guards the country trains have old fashioned conductors dressed in shorts and knee-high socks, who, if you do not possess a ticket, will gladly sell you one. Everything about the country trains is old fashioned: when I bought my ticket, the man wrote it out for me, and then handed me a carbon copy, much as he would have done decades ago. Altogether, while this may be considered terribly dated, it feels far more civilised and normal than using the new Melbourne Metro ticketing system, "Myki", which is similar to those used in London and Hong Kong.

I was taking the V/line train today to view an exhibition of Australian art at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, the largest inland town in Victoria. Ballarat, like Bendigo and Castlemaine, grew to prominence during the Goldrush of the 1880s, and like those two towns the riches it produced during those years are reflected in its magnificent 19th century architecture. But before the train could snake its way along the tracks to Ballarat, we had to pass through several nondescript towns of little significance. Among them was Bacchus March, the hometown of Peter Carey. There was very little to see. The land immediately around is flat and brown and only in the distance looms something more inspiring, the great diving ranges, tree covered mountains which stretch into New South Wales. And so we passed through Bacchus Marsh. If you stopped to look around and consider the place, how it might have shaped Carey's fiction, you would probably find yourself at a loss. This is not a place you'd expect a major writer to come from. The only thing you'd learn, were you to visit the town, is the probable reason why Peter Carey lives in New York these days.

Whenever I travel by train through the countryside, or over it by aeroplane, I find myself somewhat startled by the extraordinary amount of empty land. Most of this land, with the exception of that which lies in the tropical far north, becomes dry and parched in the summer, and the grasses which cover the plains and hills go a sort of brownish colour. The summer the skies are unfailingly wide and blue and the sun is bright, white and extremely hot. Much of my train trip was spent looking out the window at these endless fields, some of them populated with the skeletal remains of trees destroyed in the severe decade long drought which only recently came to an end.

And so, finally, and after a great deal of travel, I made it to the Ballarat Art Gallery. The exhibition was reasonably good and contained a fine selection of works by major Australian painters, but for some reason I now remember little of it. I recall seeing paintings by Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, Arthur Streeton, William Dobell, Margeret Olley and Brett Whiteley. There were several John Brack paintings. One was captioned "No subject matter was too banal for John Brack". This was probably true. Leaving the exhibition I walked around the remainder of the building. A group of rowdy schoolkids were being taken on a tour. I took a picture of a bizarre old painting by Thomas Flintoff of Henry F. Stone and his Durham Ox. Then, following the afternoon tea that came with the price of my ticket, I left the gallery altogether and began my walk around the town.

Ballarat looks much as it did, I'm sure, 100 years ago, but at the same time there is nothing quaint or museum like about it. Mark Twain visited the town during his world tour and was impressed by its grandeur, something the local business don't want anyone to forget. I wandered into one of the town's grandest hotels and found, upon entry, a list of various famous people who had stayed there, Mark Twain's name prominently among them. And the tourist brochures all contain quotes from The Great American about the town, in which he praises the remarkable manner in which it shot to fame in the 1880s.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a drink in Ballarat on a Monday. The Peter Lalor Hotel was, disappointingly, closed, and in the end I was forced to buy a beer at an "Irish" pub called "Irish Murphy's". The place had an unpleasant vibe, and I drank my Ballarat Bitter (the boring local brew) quickly before leaving and returning to the train station, a great white monster of a building, far grander than it ever needed to be, with tall Ionic columns and "BALLARAT" emblazoned on the front.  It's almost a wonder Mark Twain, who visited in 1891, didn't mistake it for a Roman temple.