Queanbeyan (The Lost Post)

(From 25 October 2011)

I saw a lady on the train this morning, she boarded the train at Waverton. She was blonde with her hair in a ponytail and had an unfortunate, sharp nose that made her seem hawkish. This look was compounded by pursed lips that seemed incapable of moving very much. I thought she might have looked pretty if she learnt to smile, but as a dad with two adorable daughters boarded the train at the next stop I saw the corners of her mouth crinkle up—she still loooked rather sour.

I wanted to say to her: "Eat, drink and be merry, for later today you may be in Queanbeyan." But I only wanted to say this to her later in the day after she was long gone, hundreds of kilometres and hours between us as I arrived in the regional NSW town, a passenger of a Canberra taxi.

The sign at the border of the town, the one abutting the ACT, said: "Welcome to Queanbeyan, country lifestyle with city benefits."

Down the main street the former was evident with buildings from the 1970s prominently on display. The low profile of the streetscape wasn't even like the surburbia of a second-tier metropolis like Brisbane, it was most certainly regional like the only other one I could recall, Cooma.

The taxi dropped me off opposite my destination. We'd circled the block looking for the number and because of roadworks it'd taken us a lot longer to turn around. He turned off the meter two blocks away to save me paying for the detour.

I was half an hour early so I decided to have lunch at a nearby cafe. There was a choice of about four eateries in the immediate vicinity ranging from a cheap noodle place, a pizzeria, a cafe from the 1960s and a cafe that looked a bit more modern but had quite eyebrow-raising prices for the area.

Although I'm always for saving a bit of money, I bypassed the noodle joint on the basis that I've never had good Asian food in a regional town (I'm told that's not true of Orange, where an acquaintance's mother runs a restaurant but I've not been to it). I spotted something on the menu that looked affordable at the modern cafe and entered.

The waitress attempted to place me in the middle of the busy cafe, but I told her I was expecting a call so urged her to find me a place towards the back. It was still loud but I thought my earpiece would cope with the level of background noise.

I ordered the steak sandwich and lemon lime & bitters and waited for the call, hoping it would come before the food arrived rather than the moment I sunk my teeth into a hunk of meat, vege and bread. As with the previous three times this particular MP has promised to call, the interview didn't happen. I didn't even get an apology call from his media adviser requesting a reschedule this time. Shame, JB, shame.

The steak sandwich came. It was a thin piece of steak with tomato, mixed lettuce and beetroot smothered in tomato sauce crammed between two pieces of white bread. There was a generous side of chips too, but it still didn't justify the $14.90 price tag. You'd expect, well *I'd* expect at least Turkish bread or ciabatta for that price.

I paid and had my meeting down the road, then went to check the bus timetable a couple of blocks away—45 minutes to wait. It was nippy and had started to rain so I ducked into a patisserie and had a pot of tea and a millefeuille (always dangerous when wearing black). The lady was the friendly sort, one for a quick spot of small talk while she bustled about the kitchen.

While I sat and looked dolefully out at the rain she proceeded to argue with someone over the phone about the roadworks outside. Apparently the roadworks, a simple widening and resurfacing project that would take about 1-2 weeks in Sydney, had been going on for months and the shops along the street had lost a significant amount of business due to decreased foot traffic.

From what I understood of her conversation, and her answers to my questions afterwards, the affected businesses were merely trying to get the council to pay for a full-page ad in the local paper to let people know they were still open. Sad times when a council will let roadworks drag on for months at thousands of dollars a day and get stubborn about paying for a simple ad.

At the last sip I rose, paid and went to wait in the cold at the bus stop. The bus arrived on time. The bus fare was an eyebrow-raising $7.20—almost half the price of a discount bus fare from Sydney to Canberra—made even more absurd by the fact that it took just 25 minutes to get into town. But it was worth it. I'd left Queanbeyan.