The kindness of strangers: dazed, confused and far from home, a train worker offered me a place to stay

I was a sobbing country kid, stranded without luggage at a big-city train station, when a voice inquired: ‘Can I help you?’

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I grew up in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales and went to university in Bathurst.

I was 19 and heading back to uni at the end of the midyear break when I fell asleep on the Sydney-bound train, waking up just after the station where I was supposed to switch to a bus. I was an inexperienced traveller, so I asked the on-board staff what to do. “Stay on until Central and we’ll sort out your train to Bathurst from there,” I was told. I resisted the temptation to get off at the next station and call my family for a pickup. I told myself it was my mistake and I needed to figure it out.

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