The letter arrived in the mail so long ago Nigel Cowan cannot recall what year it was – 1969 is his best guess.

But he remembers vividly what it said. The Victorian government was going to build a railway line to East Doncaster and the three-bedroom house he and his wife owned in Bulleen was among those that would be acquired to make way for it. Melbourne’s public transport-starved north-eastern suburbs would have trains at last.

The railway line, a part of the Liberal Bolte government’s 1969 transport plan, would run along the Eastern Freeway median then enter a tunnel at Dale Street, where the Cowans lived, on the way to East Doncaster. Continue Reading…