I think there is a certain breed of person who finds it easy to sleep on trains. I am not of that breed and no-matter how often the virtues of my day-sleeper seat are quoted to me, from either the stewards of the train or from their company literature, I fail to be convinced, and I fail to sleep.
This is my third night on the Indian-Pacific train, spanning the breadth of Australia from one ocean to the other. I boarded at Sydney on Wednesday afternoon. Tomorrow will be Saturday, and around nine-o’clock, Western Standard Time, I will disembark at Perth. I look out the window and my face is reflected back at me – the distortion of the reflection emphasizes the bags under the eyes: I dread to think what I look like in a real mirror.
In the 1995 Jim Jarmusch film, Dead Man, Johnny Depp plays a city accountant who travels to the Wild West to find work in an isolated town. He spends the journey drifting in and out of sleep while Neil Young’s reverberating score plays over the sounds of the train. Every time he wakes up, he finds that the landscape around him and his fellow passengers have changed. At one point he is woken by the sound of gunfire: a pair of trappers are shooting buffalo from the train window.
At least he sleeps, I think. I tune the ipod to Neil Young, but it does not quite have the same effect.
The Indian-Pacific sells itself as one of Australia’s Great Railway Journeys and it would be very difficult to find fault with that statement. It is long, has a varied history and successfully links two cities at opposite ends of a vast, otherwise almost untraversable terrain. The fact that it should take around three days to travel form one side of the continent to another is astonishing enough.
Some form of the route has existed since the early 1900s, the promise of the transcontinental railway helping to lure Western Australia to join the mooted federation.
But stubbornness persisted on all sides, and as many as three competing gauges from the different regions forced numerous changes of transport if the entire distance was to be covered. It was not until 1969 that the standard gauge prevailed and an uninterrupted journey could be made from one coast to the other.
The maiden voyage along these shiny new tracks left Sydney on the twenty-third of February and arrived in Perth four days later.
The route stretches 4,352 kilometers. I do not know the exact details off the top of my head, but I would go out on a limb and agree that that is a lot of football pitches.
Wednesday.
Vivian was staying in the same hostel that I was in Sydney. I did not meet her until the final breakfast when I heard a voice complaining about some god-awful sounding rail journey she had to take to Broken Hill.
“I won’t be there until tomorrow.” She wailed.
A map of the continent on the wall of the breakfast room showed me that Broken Hill was very likely on the same route as my train.
“Is that the 2.55 train,” I asked, “To Perth?”
She didn’t know, but it sounded good enough.
“An ally.” She said.
Vivian was English and about to start a tour bush camping her way up to Alice Springs, sleeping only under the stars in bivvy bags. She had been camping only twice before in her life.
“And that was when I was twelve.” She said, “No, ten.”
Michael was going on the same tour, we found him on the station with a look of bemusement which chimed with our own.
Michael was from Seattle and had started a year’s working holiday.
“But forgot the holiday part,” he said, downcast, “Spent five weeks working in a bar.”
We sat at the café on the station concourse surrounded by pigeons and suffered through round of bland white coffees. Vivian showed off a pillow she had brought for the trip. A home-made contraption made of a stuffed pair of tights wrapped in an oversized white pillow case.
“I’m opening a book on how long it’s going to stay that colour,” she said.
The train was waiting for us on platform one, and waiting with it were a platform full of pensioners, holding vast amounts of hand-luggage and carrier bags full of food and drink for the trip. Their average age, I might argue was about sixty-five and they all looked like they had been here before.
I was using a backpacker pass, a six month rail pass which let me on any of the transcontinental rail journeys which criss-crossed Australia for up to six months. The women in the travel agency I had purchased the card from had panicked when I had done so.
“I’ve never had to do one of these before,” she gibbered and made Lindsay from the Great Southern Railways talk her through the process over the telephone.
Looking around me on Wednesday afternoon, it was patently obvious that there were very few backpackers on board this train at all.
The doors opened and we poured in. Pensioners they may have been, but they knew how to use their elbows and our youthful politeness, waiting for them to bundle in before us, was largely down to self-preservation than anything else.
The train, fifteen carriages long, had two carriages full of day-sleeper seats: large airplane style contraptions which tilt back about thirty degrees when you find the correct lever. Unlike the airplanes however, they were built by someone who clearly understood that the leg does not end just below the knee – these things had legroom of sorts, which came as a blessed relief.
The pensioners sat behind us had discovered another new trick. One of the other levers on each pair of seats meant that they could be swung round one-hundred and eighty degrees. They quickly turned their portion of the train into a series of front-back back-front pods so that they could hold face to face discussions with each other. They started talking straight away and I swear they did not run out of things to say to each other until they reached Adelaide the following afternoon.
Once the carriage was full, a short woman in a company uniform clapped her hands officiously at the front of the cabin. This was Sandra, who went through – in a rather school-marmish tone – the whys and wherefores of the train, and the places we were and were not allowed to go and do.
Across the aisle from me, a red-faced elderly man in a pair of knee-length shorts, walking boots and a straw hat warned her in a muffled tone to be careful.
“Beg your pardon?” she said as she walked past.
“I’ve already had three wives.” He barked at her.
She looked at him flatly.
“And I’ve already got rid of one husband.” She replied tartly, “I don’t want another one.”
She strutted off down the bus. Straw Hat laughed with a gravelly voice.
“That told her.” He said.
The man beside him said nothing, but Straw Hat turned to him anyway.
“Glad I’m sitting next to you.” He said, “And not some woman.”
The train had started moving by this point and it was clear that there were a lot of spare seats going throughout the carriage. The man sitting beside Straw Hat spotted a spare double and claimed it.
“Should give you a bit more room.” He mumbled as he fled.
The pensioners were going through the menu, provided in the seat pockets. They were deciding what they would be ordering for breakfast the next day.
“Like magpies.” Straw Hat said to us.
“Coffee?” Vivian said.
“Hell yes.” Said Michael.
The lounge care looked as though it was furnished from the seventies, with two arcade machines from the eighties. The scenery through the windows was timeless, though: we were traversing the same route that I had taken with Clayton through the Blue Mountains, then the road and the railway had been almost parallel, but the train afforded a much better view than Clayton’s low to the ground sports car.
The hills and valleys are dense with trees, the route of the railway teasing the eye, dropping in and out of cuttings, masking the view then revealing it again like a magician revealing a white rabbit from a hat.
Darkness descended, but the view lingered, increasingly mysterious as the twilight claimed it.
Dinner is served from the canteen and proves to be of the school-dinner style of catering. A sloppy roast in a plastic box which fills a hole if nothing else.
“Have you seen the gents?” Michael asked.
I shook my head.
“I’ve been delaying that pleasure.”
“They’ve got a urinal.” Michael marvels, “On a train. Seriously.”
The train buffets and clatters like earth-bound turbulence.
Vivian looked repulsed.
“Twelve more hours.” She said.
“Two more days,” I said.
That cheered them up.
“What are you going to do without us?” Vivian said.
A mah-jongg game was being set up on the table beside us, a tedious looking romantic drama was being screened on the televisions hanging from the carriage roof – one of those films where everyone learns a valuable lesson by the end.
We went back to the canteen and order beers.
“All these old people,” Michael said, “They’ve been on this train since Perth. They can’t get off. They were your age when they got on.”
When we get back to the carriage, the lights had been switched off. Michael found that the old lady sat behind him had put his sat upright so that she could recline her own. She was snoring pointedly, should he try to disturb her.
Vivian looked out of the window.
“What time is sunrise, again?” she asked.
Sleeping in a confined space seems to be a matter of compromise. Not every muscle group will ever be entirely comfortable, so the trick is to fool the others for long enough for your mind to drift off before the pain starts. Stiffness and numbness in the morning are evidence that you have got away with it. Thursday
The train arrives in Broken Hill early in the morning, but later than we had scheduled. Dubbed ‘Silver City’, it is nearing the end of its mining productivity – a proposed tour of the location was cancelled with much apologizing by the train’s captain.
Michael and Vivian said their farewells.
“Good luck,” said Vivian eyeing the crowds of people gathering on the station. “I mean that.”
A four-wheel drive from their tour company was waiting to pick them up. I watched it circle the car-park and leave. I really did not want to get back on the train again.
The people gathered waiting for the train doors to open again, were once more of pensionable age. I had hoped that most were just seeing friends off, but an awful lot of them had pillows clenched under their arms.
They are an odd looking bunch too – some similar facial features shared between many: bulbous nose, chin and cheeks, the men with mustaches vanishing into the valley’s between them: it looks as though Mr. Punch has been here and got up to no good at all.
The doors open and I wait for everyone else to board. I wait a long time. This is the train of the nearly dead.
There seems to be no-one of my own age on this portion of the route, and I resign my selt to being alone. An elderly woman further back in the carriage seemed to have claimed me, however, as I helped her lift her luggage onto the roof rack.
“I’ve got the one with the beard,” I overheard her telling one of her friends. I sunk low into the seat and fiercely read my book.
Outside the window is nothing and everything. The ground is yellow and orange, the scrub is green and grey. The Eucalyptus – a parched, tough as nails plant if ever there was one – is white and green. On occasion, there are hills and variances of gradient – unwelcoming in their crags and scree slopes, there is the feeling that the view from the summits is the same as from their foothills. But more often than not, the ground is flat and wide and repetitive.
To the right is the road, a strip of tarmac chasing the rails, lonely telegraph poles line its length. Civilization in strips.
But if the scenery is repetitive and blank, its size and scale impress. It is not a demanding landscape to look at, it does not reward those who stare through the windows at it in the hope of seeing some minor variation, but the fact that you may turn away from it for a time – to read a book, to talk to someone, to wobble along the train for a coffee – and return to find it has not changed, not even slightly, demands a certain awe and respect.
A solitary car and caravan pass on the road, traveling in the opposite direction to us. A small cheer goes up at its progress, but perhaps this is more to do with the change in the scenery.
Signs of irrigation and farming appeared, first on the right hand side and then on both. Three hours away from Adelaide and the landscape softened with a certain subtlety. This was wheat and dairy country and the fields were tempered with green, startling against the red earth.
Further still, and even the hills seemed to look as though they had been tamed. Patchwork fields that would have not looked out of place in Europe coverd them, but the Eucalyptus trees, still surviving, were a give away. The shades of green are a veneer, nothing more. A battle had been won, but a war was still being waged.
We arrived into Adelaide a little early.
“We were late into Broken Hill,” the captain reports, “But we’re early into Adelaide. Hands up who believes in karma?”
With three hours to kill before the train set off again, I walked into town. I had been here before, but the rigidity of its grid structure made every street look both familiar and disorientating.
I bought a sandwich to stave off the rumbling stomach, then on a whim, bought a pillow as well. The town is busy, bustling. I stopped for a quick coffee, then headed back up to the station arriving with another hour and half to wait.
There were few familiar faces waiting at the station. Younger this time, Adelaide is clearly the pensioner’s preferred destination – or perhaps they were doing the sensible thing and splitting the journey up into stages. I cursed myself for not thinking in those terms myself.
Sandra has been replaced by Paul, who looks and sounds almost uncannily like Dale Winton. Despite the comparative lack of old people amongst us, he still had no qualms about treating us as though we were on supermarket sweep.
“How many joined us at Sydney?” he burbled camply.
Mine and a handful of other hands raised.
“Who slept?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
His question is met with a disgruntled murmur.
“Well,” he enthused with an oily grin, “From here on it’s much smoother.”
You could almost see him mentally adding an orchestral flourish and round of applause. In actual fact, the carriage remained silent.
“God.” He said, “You’re not happy about this are you?”
At half-past-ten, the train halts to fill the last few seats on the carriage. An Aboriginal family clamber on, three kids already in pajamas. The lights go out and so do they, sprawled over each other on the floor around their mother’s seat like rag dolls.
Walking back through the carriage at night is a strange business. Other people who seem to be doing a better job at sleeping than I, arrange themselves in their double seats in peculiar tableaux. Those who know each other, clinging to one-another, those who don’t fitted with invisible dividers. The blue night-lights of the carriage cast the scenes in a peculiar light, it looks eerie, like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. Friday
The sun started to rise at about half-past six, and I was up shortly afterwards. Breakfast was an excuse to do something different. Outside, layers of dark trees moved over each other against a ripening sunrise – a rich, orange sky.
Every few hours, a curious pilgrimage passed through the carriage on the way to the smoking car at the end. Five women, aged between fifty and ninety, would walk in an unsteady crocodile between the seats, each with their hands on the one in front’s shoulders. They would remain in the smoking room for an hour and then stagger back.
We reached the Nullarbor Plain, which is home to the world’s longest stretch of train track and very little else. The train halted here between stations, and the Aboriginal family descend, a four-wheel drive waiting for them. They waved at the train, few passengers waved back. The four-wheel drive kicked up dust as it sped off unsteadily. The horizon seemed a very long way away.
Nullarbor means tree-less and is an accurate name. Here, the rails stretched for 478 km without a curve. The plain was big and flat and hot. It was the sort of impressive sight which made you rather pleased to be on the train, no matter how claustrophobic it was becoming.
We stopped at Cook, a near-ghost town on the plain, population only four. Once a thriving railway town, the privatization of the railway system in the mid-nineties led to its downfall. Now it was just a gift shop and a public toilet, although a pair of authentic “historic wooden gaol cells” also remained.
We entered Western Australia without fan fare. The smoking car was locked in accordance with the state’s laws and the five women dejectedly made their way back to through the carriage still in crocodile formation.
“Better get pissed then.” Said one.
The laws were to be strictly enforced, although perhaps Paul was not the best person to enforce them.
“The police will be called,” he threatened, “And we will have no problems dropping you off at the next siding.”
He wagged a finger.
“I’ve done this before.” He said.
His threats went unheard and unacted upon. Cigarette butts appeared in the toilets and the gap between carriages – little more than a plastic sheath sheltering you from the weather outside as you leap from one carriage to the next – proved a popular spot to smoke dangerously in all senses of the word
That evening, we arrived in Kalgoorlie, a gold rush town since Paddy Hannan’s discovery in 1893. Anyone who has seen the television programme Deadwood will find the place familiar. The streets may not be as muddy, but it’s not hard to spot the Gem Saloon here (with the latest gold prices zooming across the front of it) or the Bella Union there. The clocks on the train went back to Western Australia time here, and we again had three hours to entertain ourselves. I walked up and down the street, then went back to the train. Maybe I could sleep, I thought. Just this once.
Can a Great Railway Journey be made on an economy fare? You read about these journey’s being made all around the world, but where does the great, as in long and big; become great, meaning important and wonderful? Were I making this journey with the a cabin with a real bed, either the standard class bunk or the first class suite, I am certain that this would have been a journey to be excited about. As it is, I worry that my knees might not work in quite the same way that they once did. So there we are: profound fact of the trip is, the difference between one great and the other, is somewhere to sleep. Is that really the best I can do?
I shift to another position and close my eyes again. My foot starts to ache, wedged between the foot rest which will not fold away and the leg of the seat in front. I contemplate letting it ache, but wonder if it will invade my dreams.
I turn over and stare out the window. In three hours, it will start to get light outside, I’ll see shapes drifting past, black against black.
I check my watch again, then vow not to look at it for another half hour.Labels: Vince
