I’ve already been awake for six hours when I jump off the metro back at Bankstown station at 8.33am on Friday. It’s the first day of driverless trains running on the extension from Bankstown to Sydenham and I was on the first service heading into the city at 4.31am.
The trip on the new track took just 21 minutes in the wee hours. Now I’m exploring the line at a more leisurely pace. I’m not sure what meal I should be eating as I stumble into An Restaurant before 9am. It’s widely considered to serve some of Sydney’s best pho.
In Vietnam, the noodle soup is typically eaten for breakfast, and the dirty dishes trolley is already stacked with bowls scraped clean by customers. The restaurant is buzzing with metro staff celebrating the culmination of two years’ hard work.
Sleep-deprived and feeling adventurous, I order the option with beef tendon ($21) which arrives in minutes.
Tendon, I conclude, is not for me, but the broth is rich and restorative, as is the iced coffee with condensed milk ($8). There’s a pep in my step as I stroll back up Bankstown City Plaza. Boxes of fish are off-loaded from trucks, vendors sell herbs from the pavement and people chat in cafes.
Unlike the city metro’s architectural marvels, Bankstown is the only new station on the south-west line. The pale-brick rectangular structure is functional, but hides a secret. Behind one facade are heritage buildings from the original station which now hosts trains running west on the T6 heavy rail line.
Outside the station, half a dozen pink replacement buses sit quietly. They are still operating on Friday and the opening weekend, while communities adjust, but they’re mostly empty.
My relationship with Sydney’s south-west metro extension is complicated. Over two years, I and everyone else waited for a line that was only meant to take 12 months to complete.
I moved from Dulwich Hill not long after the previous heavy rail line closed in September 2024 but moved back last year to Marrickville, one stop down the line.
After 12 months of queuing for those pink buses, I moved away again this year, thinking there was no end in sight to the conversion project.
Instant relief
Friday’s opening provided instant relief for commuters travelling to and from the south-western suburbs.
The driverless trains already in use from Tallawong through the city to Sydenham have been cleaned and updated with signage to reflect the 10 new stops to Bankstown. On a clear, bright morning, the wide windows at each end offer an unencumbered view of the suburbs.
Arriving at Lakemba, three stops and six minutes from Bankstown, I find a single man queuing for the pink buses. I ask why.
“I don’t know why. Is the train open?” he asks hopefully. He abandons the bus stop and heads up the station stairs.
I walk along Haldon Street, which hosts the Lakemba Nights market during Ramadan, with vendors stretching north towards the Lakemba mosque.
On Friday, I head south, paying $14 for a selection of baklava and pastries from Lebanese desert shop King of Sweets. One, deep fried and filled with custard, sends me into a sugary reverie. I sit, listening to people converse in Arabic, before heading into the station.
Campsie at 10.38am
Two stops and four minutes later, I’m at Beamish Street in Campsie. Sadly, I’m already stuffed, so can’t contemplate the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean and Malaysian street food on offer. My stomach and I will be back.
Instead, I search for some fresh fruit. There’s a market on Sundays but now I head to a greengrocer on Anzac Mall. I land on a Chinese Fuji, a Ya pear, a custard apple and an Indian bittermelon (yes, the latter being a vegetable).
Mid-morning on a Friday, Campsie is heaving. A couple of weeks ago, the metro station at the centre of the suburb was behind wire fencing and the only still point.
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Three stops from Campsie, and another six minutes down the line, and I’m back on the platform at Dulwich Hill, where I last caught a train more than two years ago.
Like the other stations on the line, the heritage buildings have been retained, with lifts added for accessibility.
The most visible difference is the addition of glass barriers along the edge of the platform which are universal along the metro line.
One of the challenges of converting the 130-year-old south-west extension has been the need to add mechanical “gap-fillers” to, well, fill the space between the metro trains and the exisiting curved platforms. Particularly wide gaps at three doors at Dulwich Hill mean they will remain closed while data is collected on the reliability of the gap-fillers.
Something else that’s changed since I left is the completion of the GreenWay, a 6km pedestrian and cycling corridor from Iron Cove to the Cooks River, which the state government likes to claim “intersects” with the metro.
This is kind of true. In reality, the GreenWay passes near Dulwich Hill’s metro station, rather than connecting to it. After squeezing past a construction truck down a road in need of resurfacing, I find the cycleway, but there’s a lack of signage.
I’m on a Lime bike, which I’ve never ridden before. I’ve been somewhat suspicious of the shared ebike scheme and I’m not encouraged after the app tells me the bike I choose is unavailable, despite it being right there in front of me.
I reluctantly settle for one with McDonald’s wrappers and old chewing gum stuck to the basket.
But, once I’m riding on the GreenWay, with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, I’m converted. I start to imagine I am the Sydney metro: driverless and travelling at speed through the inner west, my cares slip away.
Marrickville at 12.02pm
When I step back onto the metro at Dulwich Hill and turn to face the doors, I feel a hand on my shoulder. A man further down has tried to leave through one of the doors that won’t open at this platform and now I’m in his way as he hurries for an exit.
Given the metro travels at up to 100km/h, we’re at Marrickville in less than two minutes. This part of the sprawling suburb, along Illawarra and Marrickville roads, is known less for its breweries than its bars, late-night venues and restaurants.
People queue for banh mi at Marrickville Pork Roll or rice paper rolls at Banh Cuon Ba Oanh, while enormous joints of roast lamb and pork sit steaming in trays at the Corinthian Rotisserie Restaurant.
I step, instead, into the secondhand clothes shop Uturn, one of several vintage and op shops along the strip. Uturn has another location at Punchbowl, one stop from Bankstown, where you can buy clothes by the kilo for $10.
I browse through niche football shirts and spy a T-shirt with a rude pun. I don’t buy anything: I’ve spent all my money on fruit, pastries and tendon.
As I doze on a regular, rather than pink, bus home, I dream about moving again. To be close to the metro.