When he reached Shellharbour Station he found himself surrounded by cow paddocks with the straggle of houses on the other side of the road. Now David Hill was no dill and he realised that this couldn’t possibly be the resort town of Shellharbour even though the station signs were telling him so – after all he couldn’t even see the sea.
It was still the days when the railways employed people and there, waiting to collect his ticket, was a 16-year-old junior station assistant.
"Well” says David to the kid; “This clearly isn’t Shellharbour Township”.
“No mate” says the kid (he didn’t know who David Hill was, you see, or he would have called him sir). “This is Dunmore.”
“Well where’s Shellharbour?” asks David.
The kid points up Shellharbour Road and says “it's up the road there a bit, just over the hill – it’s about four or five kilometres away.”
“That’s a bit strange,” muses David. “Wouldn’t you have thought that they would have built the station a bit closer to the town than this?’’
Well, the kid looks at David Hill like he’s a bit simple and says; “No mate, it’s much better down here near the railway line.”