"Do you want earplugs with that?"

After two months now spent solely in urb and suburb, I desperately need some countryside so I feel that a train trip is in order. Enter Puffing Billy, the historic steam train through the Dandenong Ranges. The adventure begins at the end of the Belgrave suburban train line but for me it begins before then with the shenanigans at Burnley and Camberwell.

Weekends are the time when repairs are made to tracks constantly in use. Today it is the Belgrave Line's turn so out we all hop at Burnley to be shuttled via special buses to Camberwell to pick the train up again. Two lines share the same train as far as Ringwood where you connect with one or the other line depending on which service you are riding. These two are Belgrave into the foothills of the Dandenongs and Lilydale at the gateway to the Yarra Valley and vineyards.

So among the confusion of transferring from train to bus and back again there is also the added one of changing lines. Enter the winery set. I have already met the flossed up Spring Carnival ladies today heading the opposite way into the city for an all-dayer. Their early morning application of evening make up, sparkling jewels, high heels and fascinators seem a bit like under the yard arm drinking but they do look splendid even if out of place on a morning suburban train. A carriage would better suit them I feel.

Anyway these ladies have gone, packed no doubt onto a confused and crowded bus but the winery lot are sitting next to me. My word but they are the highlight of my day. Their hangover cure of 'V' and Berrocca is sending them over the top and spirits are hilariously high. Don't get them started, they will laugh at anything. It is these hungover ladies applying their mascara on the train that came up with the title for this piece. Voices pitched at glass shattering and loud enough to echo off the nearby hills, one told the others how she was in a McDonalds yesterday that was being renovated around the customers. As she placed her order the spotty teenager asked in all earnest, “would you like ear plugs with that?” Apparently they were being issued as a courtesy. This produced a howl of laughter from the gaggle and considering some passengers actually got up and changed seats, I suspect they thought that this lot should have come with the same orange putty offering. But I thought they were delightfully entertaining myself and they made the hour and a half tedious train ride fly by.

As the mascara was applied one of their number, for whom it was the first time on a train so all a little bit of an adventure, pulled out a guide to train etiquette. “Ahem,” she quoted. “Make up should not be applied on the train as people do not commute to work in a bathroom.” Wa-huh? They don't commute to work in a dining room either but people are allowed to eat on trains and subsequently litter freely. I fail to see the difference etiquette-wise. Anyway I was sad to lose my amusing friends at Ringwood as they were off to Lilydale and beyond to top up the alcohol levels already in their bloodstream.

The suburbs chugging passed my window began to change from inner city to mid-burb and finally to outposts with a view. Box Hill was one such suburb with the elevation to provide a view out over distant dark green bush covered hills. I could have caught the tram to here and completed the 109 route so I earmarked it as a possible route back.

Puffing Billy is the very popular 762mm gauge line from Belgrave to Gembrook, originally constructed in 1900 to open up outlying farmlands to the city. It was closed after a landslide in 1953 but the dedicated work of steam train enthusiasts saw it reopen in stages over the next thirty odd years. Saturdays, especially ones as brilliant as this, are really popular with families and makes me wish I had rented one to share the trip with me. Billy chugs, coughs, clatters and clangs its way through bush, farmland and prettily named villages where people wave to us on the train we pass. On to Emerald Lakeside where it is “All unboard!” to have a picnic and a paddle round the lake on a giant-wheeled bike. Makes me wish I had rented a family AND a picnic. Boy was I unprepared for a day out!

But the trip is pleasant regardless and it provides me with a much needed green scene fill because even in drought, the town is not called Emerald for nothing. Tiny bells of wild flowers pepper the lush long grass among bush canopy looking oh-so familiar but named here Ferntrees. Pukekos are here too but called Swamp Hens. Let's face it as the ad says, someone's always stealing your stuff and it's usually the Aussies. Can't complain really though can we? I mean we have a few Oz acquisitions ourselves like the White Tail and the Possum – hang on, why did we steal them?

Puffing Billy is operated by volunteers who all look as if they love what they do and it is clear that the devotees are equally fond of their train. One mother was bringing her little one on the same train she rode when she was wee. Children and adults alike sit on the sides of the carriages dangling their feet over the outside edge to cool. No OSH rules apply here. It is just the pleasant day out in the country that the doctor ordered for a Stuck in the City girl.