‘Heartening’ story unfolds on the Cragieburn line

Last night, a young boy became very distressed on the Cragieburn train line heading out of the Melbourne CBD.

As the train got out of the city loop the boy began to cry and passengers sprung into action to help.

Adam Bandt, the federal member for Melbourne, was on the train.

“This young boy started crying. He was really, really distressed.

“It became apparent really quickly that no one was travelling with him,” Mr Bandt told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell.

Commuters had trouble communicating with the boy in English, so tried a number of other languages to try and help.

“Someone came along and started speaking Mandarin and had a little bit of success, but that wasn’t really working, so she called out to see if there were any Vietnamese or Cantonese speakers on the train,” Mr Bandt said.

“A couple of women and myself got off at Newmarket station and took him to the police station.

“At the police station, again, we still had the same language difficulties.

“No one could work out where this poor kid was from,” he said.

“After a little while … it turned out his mum was at one of the police stations in the city and had been looking for him.

“A police officer from the city came and popped him in a car back to mum.”

The boy and his mother had been shopping in the city when they had become separated, and the boy had tried to take a train home alone, but had got on the wrong train line.

Mr Bandt said the actions of the passengers on the train were “really heartening to watch”.

“At a time when we’ve got people who I think are being treated wrongly and unfairly in this country, it’s nice to know that that’s probably not the norm. This is the norm,” he said.