The railways were the arteries and veins of Victoria. The official timetable at stations was as valuable as the weather forecast today. The railway platforms breathed an air of importance with the stationmasters dressed like captains of ocean liners, the throbbing of the huge locomotive at the end of the platform, the smell of burning coal and the hissing sound of the steam and, above all, that palpitating fear of many children and adults that they might be left behind by a train departing seemingly on a whim. Nearly every town of a thousand people had its own railway station in 1900. The only places which still depended on the coach drawn by horses were a few gold towns high in the mountains, new farming villages in the forest country, and towns at the remote extremities of Victoria.

Orbost was one of the remotest. It clamoured for a railway, signing petitions, lobbying in parliament, and sending deputations to the few ministers who visited the town. Those travelling to Orbost went by train from Melbourne to Bairnsdale, boarded a little steamer and travelled across the Gippsland lakes to Lakes Entrance, which was then called Cunninghame, and sat in the jolting coach for the last stage of the journey. A seat in the mail coach was dear, and a labourer paid two days’ wages for that part of the journey. When at last the coach passengers crossed the river flats of the Snowy, passed through the crops of maize, saw the kerosene lamps of Orbost coming closer, and at last reached the huddle of townspeople waiting for the latest Melbourne newspaper or an anxiously expected letter, their sense of relief must have been intense. Few people travelled further east than Orbost. The track which was to become the Princes Highway was a chain of bogs in those winter months when tall forest obscured the sun.