Credit: Matt Davidson
But there’s one other thing that cuts through the esoteric conversations about dairy products on Melbourne’s public transport: the overhead announcement bongs. Melbourne is teeming with these peculiar noises, many of them as iconic as the old-school clatter of its trams. Every time you tap on your myki card or listen out for the platform announcement at Flinders Street Station, the small bongs and tritones that you hear are in equal measure antiquated and a part of Melbourne’s historical fabric.
The fact many of these quaint musical notes have been in circulation for decades is what adds to Melbourne’s charm. In many ways, Melbourne operates at a slower pace than Sydney. Just look at how long the Victorian government took building its Metro Tunnel (about 10 years), for instance, and the fact that Melbourne Central looks like it hasn’t had a refresh since the 1980s.
Our train stations, including Flinders Street Station, have their own, distinctively Melbourne sound effects.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Now the Metro Tunnel is in full operation – finally – these sounds maintain a vital link to the city’s past. With many of the new stations along the Metro line containing vast, cavernous spaces deep underground, they run the risk of replicating any other generic metropolitan train station. Or worse, copying the new Sydney Metro service that opened in 2024 (typical Sydney, beating us to the punch).
What’s going to keep Melbourne distinctly Melburnian for the millions of people who live here and use its sprawling public transport network – and remember, Melbourne has a bigger population than Sydney, thank you very much – is the continued presence of these old-school bongs and tritones.
Melbourne’s new Myki readers have adopted Sydney’s harsher beeps.Credit: Luke Hemer
There is, alas, change afoot. Even before the Metro Tunnel opened earlier this month, the freshly updated myki gates started recycling the unfriendly electric beeps that assault one’s ears in Sydney. These colourless, bland changes not only represent a small, spiteful victory to NSW in the tired Melbourne v Sydney rivalry, but embody a loss of Melbourne’s uniquely eccentric sonic texture.
These sounds are not only historical in their place within the city’s sensory fabric, they are simply welcoming and soothing. They make the usually hellish experience of commuting to work every day just that little bit less dreadful, when you have that fun little bong to tell you when to pile out.
The beeps of card readers on Sydney buses and Metro services are short and sharp, in their curt tones ordering you to hurry up just as brusquely as the shifty feet of the locals bristling behind you. Melbourne’s bongs and clatters and overhead trills, on the other hand, are so fantastically outdated that they dreamily invite you to just take your time. If Melbourne’s public announcement tritones take 20 years to be updated, then I’ll gladly take that as clear evidence that you shouldn’t be in a rush, either.
Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier is a freelance writer and classical music critic based in Melbourne.
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