Coogee to Chatswood Commute

I wake early for my daily commute. It’s a long journey from the Eastern suburbs to the North Shore. At the bus stop on Arden Street near Coogee Beach, I wait for the 08:10 372 bus. The express X74 zooms by, but unless I want to walk half a kilometre to the train station when I get into central Sydney, the normal 372 route suits my purposes much better. The breakfast stall near the bus stop does a brisk business in fresh juices, coffees and pastries as the rush hour starts to build. The beach is quiet and calm in the early mornings, glittering in the sunlight.

As the blue and white bus bumbles up to the stop, I insert my weekly travel pass into the ticket machine, which beeps importantly then spits it back out again. We drive uphill and past the suburb of Randwick and Kensington. Then it’s all systems go in the bus-only lane of Anzac Parade and into the city. The route to Central Station takes about half an hour, but if the traffic is bad (and it inevitably is) it can take me about forty minutes before I alight at Chalmers Street in Surry Hills.

A pedestrian subway leads me underground, into the main entrance of Central Station. It is a long walk, maybe five to ten minutes depending on what kind of shoes I’m wearing for the day, before I reach Central Station. Another swipe of my travel pass, and then I hop onto 08:50 yellow North Shore & Western line from Platform 16, towards Chatswood. The trains have spacious, generous carriages, with an upper and a lower deck, but even so, it is extremely crowded in the mornings and evenings.

The train trundles through Town Hall and Wynyard before bursting out into sunlight near Sydney Harbour. Crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge is my favourite part of my commute. The reason why I generally choose a seat on the upper deck of the train is to drink in the splendid view of the Opera House, twinkling in the sun, off to the right. From there it is another six stops to Chatswood, past the bourgeois suburbs of Milson’s Point, North Sydney, Waverton, Wollstonecraft, St Leonards and Artamon. It takes me a full hour to get door-to-door on my daily commute but the view of the Harbour and the Opera House makes it all worthwhile!