Despite never setting foot inside the Lilydale Train Station Pub, Coldstream resident Matt Ellis (43) admits the venue now occupies a disproportionate place in his emotional landscape.
“I think about it most days,” he says, watching the boarded up lot where the pub known as the VRI once thrived. “Like a lost opportunity. I used to say, ‘next Friday I’ll drop in for a cheeky one,’ but then next Friday became the Friday after, and now… well, there’s just boarded up windows and a massive steel fence surrounding it.”
Mr Ellis, who describes himself as “not really a pub guy,” says he had formed an impression of the venue entirely from a 90-second YouTube montage. “I saw the fire pit. Ripped up couch. That bit where someone gets handed a pot with one hand and a raffle ticket with the other. It just felt real, you know?”
His mourning is not without confusion.
“By all reports, it was a bit grim. Sticky floor. Odd smell. One bloke online said it had the ambience of a dentist waiting room, if the dentist also sold Bundy and Coke. But that’s not the point.”
What is the point?
Mr Ellis pauses, considering.
“I suppose it’s about potential. It’s about all the things you think you’ll get around to doing, and then the pub is closed down and that’s it. And you realise: the future’s already happened, and you weren’t in it.”
More to come…
The Lilydale Underground 
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