Healesville Railway

Rusty rails and gravel ballast run from sharp foreground detail to a vanishing point beyond the tree line near Healesville in the Yarra Valley, the corridor narrowing through dry grass and eucalypt. White marker posts stand along the right-of-way. The rails carry a deep oxide colour that reads as long disuse, and wooden and concrete sleepers sit unevenly in the ballast with vegetation pressing in from both sides.

The Healesville line opened on 1 March 1889, with an intermediate station at Tarrawarra, and carried timber, livestock, milk and dairy out of the valley. No services ran beyond Coldstream after 9 December 1980, and the Healesville to Coldstream section was officially closed to all traffic on 10 March 1983. A cooperative formed in 1984 to reopen it and was granted an Order in Council the following year to run the section as a tourist railway, with a partial reopening as far as Yarra Glen in 1986 after major bridgework. On 17 July 2010 a Walker railmotor made the first passenger departure from Healesville in more than 30 years. Brett photographed this stretch on 23 July 2011, on the Nikon D7000. The frame works on line and recession before any of that history is read into it.