The Quintessential Traveller

29th March 2008...
And so after two weeks at Caulfield I had to move to Clayton. A place far from the busier parts of city life, this district is definitely sub urban. It is nice though, very calm, very peaceful.. and the night sky here is awesome! It wasn't hard to locate the house, the guys there picked a sweet spot right across their school, Monash's Clayton Campus. It was here that I experienced the first of Autumn and it was not gentle. But when I first arrived it was still Summer in full force, it's hard to get used to the idea that when the sun's down, it is time to sleep. Sunset is around nine at night during summers here, you'd think it'd only be time for dinner. Even then, the climate is most irregular with bouts of cold fronts from the south for days and then an abrupt return to the heat. When you seek shelter under a tree in a hot day you'll be surprised of the difference!
Now I've come to stay in the home of five guys, Jeff's friends, Monash students, football players and gamers. They've just gotten the place not too long ago either, cabinets weren't available, door handles litter the corridor.. but it was peaceful.

The thing with this place is it is quite some distance away from Swinburne University of Technology.. not to mention on a different railway line altogether. Clayton's at the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne metro while Hawthorn, where Swinburne's campus is located, is still well within metro and in the east. To get to school I could do it several ways. One way was to take a bus from Monash Clayton to Clayton Railway station and get on a train to Richmond which takes around 40 minutes at least and then switch to an eastbound train. That path normally takes almost an hour. The other one which we only discovered after a few days was taking a bus from Monash northwards to Syndal Railway Station and then head towards Burnley and then off to Glenferrie.. All in all... it was still very time consuming. At times I didn't even feel like going back to Clayton after school! I'll load up a nice map of the Metro railway network for a good idea of how it was!
THERE YOU GO! Melbourne Metropolitan Railway Network.

That's the temporary home at Clayton!

And from the driveway...

The first signs of Autumn from very visible from Syndal station. On the way to school of course...
This station is quite camouflaged by bushes and trees and everything that it actually looks like a railway line cuts through a hill from the outside.

The good thing about staying at the suburbs is the view, which are clear and unobstructed most of the time. But that comes with the wind, the cold, the hail and the storm. Oh well...

Syndal station!!! This was my favourite hangout place for a good two weeks!

Oh and of course I've finally managed to get some music back in here, just as it was orignally way back in.. I can't remember which year. Anyway this IS a sanctuary so if all this lets you escape even for a moment from the rush and the works, then the purpose for the existence for this place has been fulfilled. And I'll be glad it helped.