What were you doing when you were 15 years old?
Amongst the dignitaries at the recent reopening ceremony of the new Burpengary Railway Station sat a woman whose memories of working at the station stretch back further than those of anyone else in attendance.
Local grandmother, Shirley Lane (nee Mussig), now a vibrant 83-year-old, was given the job of station mistress at Burpengary Station in 1957. Shirley was only 15 years and six weeks of age at the time, making her the youngest station mistress in Queensland and possibly in Australia.
Shirley said much had changed since her railway days.
“The building back then was very primitive and it wasn’t only a railway station,” Shirley said. “It was also the post office, the telephone exchange and an agency for the Commonwealth Bank.
“The station was staffed from 6am to 10pm. Two of us worked there – you would work either 6am to 2pm or 2pm to 10pm. We didn’t sit around waiting for trains. We also sorted the mail and gave it to the postman.
“In 1962, I applied for annual leave as I was getting married. Queensland Rail promptly told me that they don’t employ married women and I had to retire.
“They must have had trouble finding someone a few years later though as I did relief work when I was pregnant with my third child.”
Shirley Lane’s Remarkable Journey as a Pioneer in Queensland’s Railway History
The building itself has come a long way, too. In 1888, the first ‘crossing gate’ was built and the prefabricated station building was completed in 1917. Historical records of world events were left in the ceiling of the building by the Queensland Rail workers who constructed it. This ‘time capsule’ of sorts was not uncovered until the 1990s.
Shirley said the funniest memory she had of her time at Burpengary was of those crossing gates.
“They were big heavy gates and I had to manually operate them to let a herd of about 60 cattle cross the lines without wandering down the tracks,” she said. “It wasn’t something you saw every day and I’ve never forgotten it.”
Special thanks to Shirley for sharing her memories with us – she is a living legend.
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