I’m probably one of the only people who feels this way about the Monorail closing as it’s a very personal experience, but it turns out for me, it has a deeper connection with my view of Sydney than I thought. This only really struck me on Thursday [June 27] when I took my last ride on it.
To most people, the Monorail is a thing that tourists use. It goes nowhere, is too expensive or is a joke from The Simpsons (“it’s more of a Shelbyville idea …”). To me, however, it affords an integral perspective on the city of Sydney and how it has changed and developed over the years.
My Dad, Colin Butcher, used to work on the Monorail from the day it opened in 1988 till I was around 13-14 years old. I was 3 years old when it opened, so my first memories of the city were about the Monorail. As it was new, there was a lot of attention directed at it, and every time we went to the city we rode on it. This was partly because it was free for us to travel because Dad worked on it, and also because I was a train obsessed kid. Riding the Monorail became a thing that our family did every time we went to the city. If we drove to the city, we’d park at the Monorail home base and catch it into the city. If we caught the train, we’d get off at St James and catch it to where we needed to go. In my mind, growing up, Sydney has a Monorail, and if you go to the city, you go on the Monorail. Fact of life.
The staff of the Monorail was never a huge number, so they all knew our family. Each time we’d turn up at a station, we’d be greeted with a “Oh, hi guys! Just come straight through the barriers” and then be ushered to the front of the train to sit in the driver’s cab so we could get a seat and chat to whomever was driving. A lot of the time Mum would line up these visits with when Dad was driving, so we’d wait for his one to come around and get to hang out with him while he drove it. From that viewpoint, I spent hours watching the city from above, learning where everything was in relation to other landmarks, watching the cars and people below, keeping track of where we were on the network map, and just watching the city evolve as we sailed on above it.
Over the course of these trips with Dad, I learnt how to operate a Monorail (if I remember correctly: in semi-automatic mode you push the black button to go and keep pushing the yellow vigilance button so it doesn’t apply the emergency brakes), how the basic signaling, CB radios and electricity supply worked, and just generally got a good look behind the scenes on the way a public transport system operated and was maintained. Most importantly, this also meant some great time hanging out with my Dad, especially the times Mum would drop me off with him while he drove so she could do some things in the city. It was a time we could share together, with him having company at work, and me being a young kid “helping” his Dad drive a train.
Because of this situation, the Monorail became to me something that defined the city and also gave me many happy memories. The removal of it from the city landscape is a tough one, as it has been a permanent fixture in my lifetime and also a symbol of my childhood. You pull down the Monorail, you remove a physical reminder of the fun times spent with my Dad and the way I initially related to my town, Sydney.
I understand that things sometimes need to change so the world can progress (the Monorail was only designed to have a 25-year lifespan anyway) and usually I’m keen for it, but in this case it means a whole lot more to me than just the removal of an old form of transport like others see it. It turns out it means a lot more to me than even I had thought!
