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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Deb Saxon, as told to Merran Hitchick

The kindness of strangers: dazed, confused and far from home, a train worker offered me a place to stay

‘Stunned, I stood on the platform with no idea what to do next,’
‘Stunned, I stood on the train platform with no idea what to do next.’ Composite: SSPL/Getty Images/fotograzia

I grew up in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales and went to university in Bathurst.

I was 19 and heading back to uni at the end of the midyear break when I fell asleep on the Sydney-bound train, waking up just after the station where I was supposed to switch to a bus. I was an inexperienced traveller, so I asked the onboard staff what to do. “Stay on until Central and we’ll sort out your train to Bathurst from there,” I was told. I resisted the temptation to get off at the next station and call my family for a pickup. I told myself it was my mistake and I needed to figure it out.

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