Can you spot the glaring error on this map of Sydney’s suburbs which has meant it has now had to be withdrawn? Picture: Supplied
TAKE a look at the map above and see if you can spot what's wrong with it. It’s not obvious but it’s such a biggie that the government has been forced to pulp the guide.
At first glance, it looks like any normal map.
Issued by Sydney’s transport authority, it’s a helpful guide to finding your way by bus and train around the city’s inner west.
The suburb names are familiar: there’s Homebush, where the Olympics were held; Flemington, where the fruit and veg markets can be found; and, if you were to fold it out to it’s full extent, you’d find Newtown, Sydney’s spiritual home of the bushy beard and mason jar.
But glance in the top left corner and you may notice something odd. Something that really shouldn’t be there.
It’s a seemingly normal railway station just off the M4 motorway in the city’s west. But try to make your way to it and you’ll fail. You’ll never find a sign. You’ll search in vain for an entrance and, even if you do, the trains will never stop. For this is the Atlantis of interchanges — rumoured but never found.
This map dates from late last year. But Clyburn station closed decades ago. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied
Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance today unveiled the first glimpse of Sydney?s new metro train, with a life-size train model delivered for customer testing on Sydney Metro Northwest. The 13-tonne life-size train model has been delivered to the Showground Station site and is a full-scale version of approximately 75 per cent of the front carriage ? including the distinctive nose section where customers will be able to travel while looking directly out the front of the fully automated train. ?This is a pretty exciting glimpse of tomorrow?s Sydney,? Mr Constance said.
‘WHY DIDN’T WE STOP?’
The latest government-issued bus map for inner west Sydney includes, as clear as day, a reference to Clyburn station. The only problem is Clyburn station doesn’t exist and in many ways never really did.
The last time a train screeched to a stop at this isolated halt was 24 years ago this month. Yet it has mysteriously found its way back onto the Sydney transport map.
“It’s certainly not a grand station,” Bill Phippen, archive manager of the Australian Railway Historical Society, told news.com.au, “You’re not going to go, ‘Why didn’t we stop here?’ when the train goes through it.”
As expresses shoot past to Parramatta and Penrith, the site is now little more than a wide patch of green between the tracks with piles of earth and traces of concrete.
However, even when it was open, slapping it on a public transport map wouldn’t have been much use as it was never used by the public. No road meets it and it was reserved for a select group of people only.
Clyburn opened in 1948 and is surrounded on all sides by railway workshops.
“For the ease of people going to the workshops they built this little station that was only intended to be used by people working there,” Mr Phippen said. “Halfway between Auburn and Clyde, in a brainwave, they called it Clyburn, an amalgamation of those names. It’s not even a real suburb.”
By the early 1990s, the workshops were downsizing and no longer needed as many employees. As the demand for a dedicated railway station waned, Clyburn just seemed to slowly disappear along with the workers who once used it. So much so, that its exact closing date is unknown, said Mr Phippen.
“Clyburn was still open in January 1991 but was gone by February 1992.”
At least Clyburn made it onto the map. Poor Homebush, the very much open terminus for trains on Sydney’s inner west line, was completely left off new signs installed at Central station last year. The metal signs have since been removed.
The very much disused Clyburn station. Today even less of the station exists but its has mysteriously found its way back onto Sydney’s transport map.Source:Supplied
DELIBERATE MISTAKES
Cartographers are known to sometimes insert deliberate mistakes into their maps.
Publishing director of Australian street directory giant Melway, Murray Godfrey, told news.com.au that while its directories had never included a fictitious road, other map makers had.
“The reason [cartographers] do it is to try and catch people out,” he said. If another map turns up with that same mistake, it’s likely to be a straight copy.
However, Mr Phippen doubted Sydney Buses had been that cunning and suspected they just accidentally resurrected a railway station that closed a generation ago.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “They’re probably just working off an old map.”
A spokeswoman for State Transit, the operator of Sydney Buses, was unwilling to discuss how or why this oddity had made it back onto the map, simply telling news.com.au: “The inclusion of Clyburn station on our network guide was published in error and will be removed immediately.”
Mindful of the masses of people who may have already searched for the station in vain, the statement continued: “State Transit apologises to customers for any inconvenience caused.”
The remains of the never opened Woollahra station in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Picture: Fred3801Source:Supplied
CLOSED, LONG FORGOTTEN
Clyburn is not the only long gone station remnants of which can still be detected if you squint hard enough. Just a few kilometres east from Clyburn, towards the city, Rookwood station lies adjacent to the cemetery of the same name and was the final destination for mourners as they said goodbye to their loved ones.
Also in Sydney, just before the Eastern Suburbs line reaches Bondi Junction, the train passes the remains of Woollahra station. The planned stop was scuppered in the 1960s by its upper crust neighbours horrified at the thought of a busy railway interchange in their backyard.
“The locals rejected the hustle and the bustle of a railway so the station was never opened,” said Mr Phippen.
In Melbourne, the platforms and even tracks can still be spotted of long closed stations in Carlton and Fitzroy.
Woollahra and Rookwood remain just memories. But who knows, come next year, perhaps they’ll be brought back to life, just like lonely Clyburn.
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