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Published: January 13th 2007
Whilst thumbing through the leaflets for Melbourne's transit system trying to get my head round the train routes, I discovered that there is a town in the suburbs of Melbourne called 'Thornbury', same as my hometown back in England! Given that I am bored and skint, and I promised myself the weekend off from job-hunting, I thought it would be worthwhile spending the $3 for a ticket to Thornbury to discover whether in fact the Melbourne train sytem travels through time and space to somehow magically transport me home, or whether it was just a freaky coincidence!!
Unfortuneately, the transglobal wormhole thingy I was expecting didn't actually exist and the more mundane reality was that Thornbury is in fact a rather rundown suburb in the north of Melbourne. It seems to be some sort of Greek migrant stronghold in the 'burbs. I read somewhere that Melbourne has a higher Greek population than any city in the world except for Athens. I guess quite a lot of them live in Thornbury (Australia)!
The Melbourne City train destinations aren't just limited to the one UK place name. According to my Melbourne transport map there is also: "Newmarket", "Kensington", "St. Albans", "Albion",
St. Mary's School
Freakily enough, there is a St. Mary's School in my Thornbury too!!"Tottenham", "Newport", "Epping", "Preston", "Clifton Hill", "Windsor", Brighton Beach", "Hampton", "Sandringham", "Richmond", "Burnley", "Camberwell", "Canterbury", "Surrey Hills", "Box Hill", "Blackburn", "Croydon", "Malvern", "Cheltenham", "Chelsea", "Hastings" and "Pakenham" as well as train stops at the curiously named "Aircraft", "Ivanhoe", "Balaclava" and "Batman" !!!
I'm not sure exactly how many towns called Thornbury exist around the world. A quick look on the internet brought up ones from Canada and New Zealand as well. Mine is certainly the original though as it predates the existence of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the States (900AD)!
I am well aware that this could be my most random/irrelevant/boring blog to date except for my immediate family and a couple of friends back home from
Thornbury (near Bristol, by the way), but it's
my travel blog !! 😊
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No place like home!
Well we haven't got a station, bowling club or gun shop in the UK Thornbury but we can boast a leisure centre, golf course and chippy. As for 'LJ Hooker, Estate Agent', we have got estate agents by the bucket load and masses of charity shops - a whole high street full of them!