43) Railway Cafe

Many of the deliveries we did were to places that were hard to access but I think the worst was the one we had to do to the café on the platform of the railway station. To get to the platform of Gosford station you have to go down a double flight of steps or use the lift. Every Tuesday morning we would have to take a large order to the café. Our little car was too small for us to carry trolleys with us so we would fill the car with the order and hope and pray that there would be two supermarket trolleys left lying around that we could use to carry the goods down. How we hated Tuesday mornings! We would try to get to Gosford Coles as early as possible to get started early but if we arrived too early the Coles staff would not have finished putting the order together and we would have to wait. Once the girls had finished working on it the groceries would be loaded in to the two trolleys and we would have to take it up a long escalator to the car park and load it into our car. Being very careful not to squash any of the twenty or so loaves of bread as they would be rejected by the café if we they were misshapen. Then we would drive to the station and look for a parking space as close as possible to the entrance. Next we would look for trolleys, there were usually a few there as people would wheel their groceries from the supermarket and just abandon the trolley when they were at the station. Next we would load the order from the car into the trolleys (watch out for those 20 loaves!!!) and we would start our decent. From the parking space to the actual entrance to the station was up a short but rather steep hill and the camber of the pavement also sloped towards the road. We could not use the first entrance as that had steps but had to go to the furthermost one that had wheel chair access. Then things improved as the ground was level and it was much easier to propel our heavy loads. To get on to the platform without a ticket we had to go to the security office and fill in a form saying who we were, why we were there and if we knew where the emergency evacuation area was. At least they did not ask any of our family history or what our political affiliations were but they would not accept one form for the one delivery, we had to fill in a form each and fill them in each and every week, but they were always friendly and helpful.

Then we would be let through and were able to get into the lift. The slowest lift in the whole of the southern hemisphere, would take us down to the platform. The little café had a step up into the shop and it was awkward to get the trolleys up but with Jonny at one end and me at the other we managed quite well. The trolleys were then negotiated around the end of the counter and into the back room where we unloaded all the bread, litres of milk, cans of cool drinks, tinned goods and frozen items. The order was checked and when the young lady who was serving the public had time she would sign our documentation and pay us for it. Then we would have to take the trolleys back up and we would try to leave them in a position that they would not be spotted by the trucks that patrolled the area looking for abandoned trolleys to return to the stores. We wanted them to be there for the next Tuesday’s ordeal. In the event of there being no trolley we could use one that was stored in the café but that meant that we had to go down to the café, come up again with the trolley, load up half of the order, take it down, come back up again for the second load and then take that back to the café. This was bad enough in good weather but when it was raining we would get soaked through.

As this was a Cash On Delivery order when we had been paid we had to take the money back to Coles. Back to the car park, down the escalator and then we had to find someone who had the authority to accept the money and give us a signature for it. Sometimes everyone was “in a meeting” and we would be delayed. Then we felt like having a temper tantrum right in the middle of the store to get the attention we needed. All this for a payment of $9.00, why did we do it? We did it because we felt that we were getting other work form Gosford Coles and had to take the bad ones as well as the good ones but looking back now I think we were silly not to tell them that we wanted more money or we were not going to deliver to the Station.

I was always so pleased when it was Tuesday afternoon and we had finished doing our Station delivery then we could think “A whole week before we have to do that again”.