G'Day!

I apologize for the length of this update but a change in hotels in Perth has meant that things are even slower than I expected. Wednesday December 3, 2003 Today is the beginning of the big trip. Lorna and Jack (Aunt and Uncle) and Ni and Chris and their children Michaela and Zack see us off on our QANTAS flight to Sydney. A brief shuttle drive gets us to Sydney’s Central Rail Station where we have to wait for several hours before we are allowed to board the Indian Pacific for the trip to Perth. After a brief ceremony by the on-board staff on the platform we are directed to berths 7 and 8 in carriage L. Our own little cabin with toilet and washbasin (fortunately as separate bowls) that pop out from the wall of the smallest bathroom I’ve ever been in! We are surprised to learn that this is the Christmas trip of the Indian Pacific. Besides Santa Claus the train is also carrying the aging Australian Rock star John Paul Young famous for the song “Love is in the Air”. We keep looking at every face to see if we can recognize JPY. The train departs at 2:55pm and we settle into our cabin and wait for the 6:30pm reception where we get, over blue champagne, to introduce ourselves to all the other passengers in Gold Kangaroo Service who have selected the second meal seating. Our (8:00pm) dinner seating is called Moonlight and Miranda is delighted to see Heidi at (actually under) the table opposite. Heidi is Ernie’s Labrador guide dog and she is driven by an overwhelming desire for food. However Murray the head waiter makes the public announcement that we can pet her when she is not on the harness, but she must not be fed at any time. Ernie slips her titbits from time to time. The first day of train travel goes from Sydney to Parkes with a stop at Bathurst for Santa and JPY to get off and greet and sing with the local school children who line the platform and wave at us as we pass. We aren’t allowed to get off to witness the big event and no singing is heard, but expectations are high that we will see JPY later in the trip. Rain began to fall as we crossed the Blue Mountains, but appears to fade later in the evening. When I wake at around 3am the sky is starlight except for the distant horizon which glows regularly with lightening bursts. Thursday December 4, 2003 Today the train goes from Condobolin in NSW to Spenser Junction in SA. Nice clear day but the recent storms have dropped quite a lot of water. The countryside changes from red earth and scattered gumtrees to low lying scrub. It changes to rolling hills and wheat fields and some vineyards as we approach Adelaide, and then back through the spectrum to red earth and low scrub as we head towards WA. Several kangaroos and a solitary emu are spotted. Yesterday Jos (Maitre d') learnt that we are on our way to the Immunology conference in Perth and he told us that another passenger is doing the same. This morning at the 6:30am pre-breakfast snack he brings Felicity to our table. (It seems like a major aim of the staff is to bring people together during their trip – they seem to be continually making introductions.) Felicity works at Sydney’s Centenary Institute run by Tony Basten – one of the reviewers of my PhD thesis many years ago. (A little name dropping in Immunology circles doesn’t hurt.) The reason for the early snack is to fortify us for a bus trip around Broken Hill, one of Australia’s great mining towns reflected in street names like Ore and Crystal. However the train is late and we have a shortened tour (fortunately at reduced cost) the feature of which is a trip to the (Royal) Flying Doctor Service base and hangers. This is the only mode of medical attention for vast regions of the Australian outback. We learn that many places have a medical kit supplied by the Service free of charge and available to all who need it. It’s a large box that seems to be filled with everything you might need, except snake anti-venom which is about the only thing you might need. More on snakes later! Murray (Head Waiter), knowing that Miranda is a veterinarian, brings Ernie and Heidi to our table for breakfast. While Heidi spends most of her time sniffing at the napkin in my lap for crumbs, at least that’s what I think she’s doing, Ernie tells us his life story. By the time he’s finished I have drool over a good part of one trouser leg, and I didn’t feed her a thing. Ernie is English (although born in India) and trained as a blacksmith before WWII when he joined a Light Horse division, only to have it become mechanized a few months later. Because of his knowledge of Urdu (the language taught to Indians and Pakistanis soldiers so they can communicate) he is sent to Burma with the Gurkhas, wounded and sent back to England. He ended up at Woomera (rocket testing range) in the Australian outback and finally retired in Adelaide. During the meal we are joined by an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics from University of Michigan and he and Ernie briefly converse in Urdu. Yesterday evening Jos had asked whether anyone would like to give a 10 minute talk to the passengers on some interesting topic of Australian life and Miranda offers to lecture on the dangers of Australian wildlife. Titling her talk “If I was Born in Australia I’d be Dead by Now” she gives the gathered throng a humorous thumbnail sketch of various venomous species. Part of her talk is based on a report in the Flying Doctor newsletter of the efforts required to save the life of a man bitten by a King Brown snake (highly venomous) while he slept. Questions or comments are entertained at the end and a gentleman gets up to say that there are no dangerous creatures in Australia. He knows because he’s been here since 1961 and has never had any problems. I recognize him as the “true blue Aussie battler” who at yesterdays’ introductions was at great pains to make sure we all knew he is English and that England just beat Australia in the Ruby World Cup. We Australians have a name for this type of person “a Whingeing Pom” (Sorry Roger and Joyce, but some country’s do have ‘em). Immediately Murray jumps to Miranda’s defense and tells us his story of unprovoked brown snake attack, as do several others. (Note: After we reach Perth every newspaper we open up has a different story of unprovoked snake attack!) After the talk Miranda is thanked for her interesting talk by “Bruce”, an Engineer and marketing supervisor for the Canadian Railroad and a real train enthusiast. We have lunch with him and the Emeritus Linguist Professor. At some point the conversation turns to Israel and Palestine with the Professor supporting the Palestinians and “Bruce” as the son of holocaust survivors providing a somewhat different point of view. All is saved when we are asked whether we want coffee and Miranda and I turn the conversation toward short blacks, long blacks, and flat whites. Politics and racism are just not suitable topics during First Class train travel! We are given a bus tour of Adelaide later in the day. Adelaide is Australia’s only really planned city. The streets of the city proper are all straight and the city is surrounded by parkland which was to serve as a buffer to allow defense of the city in the 19th century. There are many fine old buildings and Miranda is quite taken with the place. This is not a universal feeling as at dinner we meet Anthony, a South African, who is moving himself from Adelaide to Perth. Friday December 5, 2003 Today the train travels from Bookaloo in SA to Stewart in WA. The country here is seriously flat, red and devoid of visible wildlife, except for pairs of wedgetailed eagles that spiral the open bush. There must be something down there! Later in the day we see several herds of horses, whether they are wild is hard to say as we also see cattle. Others even see wild camels which are not native but were introduced along with camel drivers from Afghanistan. At breakfast we meet a Swiss school teacher and her husband. She has been in Australia for several months. The first month was to improve her English and now they are traveling around the country. During the train trip we met several Europeans and they all are taking a month or more to tour Australia. Well, it is a big country! A highlight of this part of the trip is a visit to Cook. Inhabitants 2; the station master and his wife. There used to be a thriving railworker community here but when the line passed from public to private hands there was significant downsizing! So now almost all the houses are empty and the swimming pool is dry. The only constant is that the golf course still doesn’t have any grass. When we enter the little tourist shop it is packed and there is an in depth conversation going on. It turns out that several “journos” are taping a Q and A with the stationmaster’s wife. I doubt the poor woman sold a thing to the several hundred passengers while the train was in Cook. Sometimes journalists should be seen and not heard! I’m beginning to think that JPY isn’t providing these people with enough interest. He’s certainly not providing us with much excitement either as he is supposed to perform for us here in Cook. But we have to be satisfied with a photo of Miranda with Santa. Lunch is with a retired couple from York, England who have been visiting their children in Australia. They have been looking for kangaroos but haven’t seen any. Later in the day I watch for several hours and seen about a dozen ‘roos and numerous cattle, and also miles and miles of nothing but flat earth with the occasional scraggly bush. Conversation can bring out interesting comparisons. Now retired the York couple has moved from their bungalow to a much smaller flat and have throw away many things including family photographs, a decision they now regret. When the recent fires in Southern California were threatening us last month the first thing packed into our cars was our photographs. Oh, a comment on the food. Our lunch choice today is a Swagman’s Lunch which is a sausage, a thin slice of beef, small damper (bush bread) and some veg. Hmmm, this is supposed to be First Class isn’t it? So why are we eating such a tasteless meal? While this lunch is not typical the big disappointment of the trip is the poor quality of the food. At least the wines, such as Wynns Coonawarra Shiraz Cabernet, are very good. And I guess we aren’t as disappointed as train buff “Bruce” who arrived at Sydney’s Central Train Station for his trip across Australia in a coat and tie, only to find the carriages populated by characters like me in T-shirts and jeans! The Linguistics Professor joins us for dinner. We have a real sunset during the meal and the dining carriage is directly opposite a small mob of ‘roos when the train has to stop. During dinner we also get to quiz the head waiter, Lindley, about the whereabouts of JPY. As Lindley is part of the crew change that occurred in Adelaide he assures us that he did see JPY perform on the platform while we toured the city. When we returned we did see the small sound stage being dismantled, as we did in Broken Hill. However we remain skeptical. Toward the end of the meal Miranda checks on why Heidi is licking and nibbling at her feet and offers advice to Ernie about allegies. I diagnose it as just her usual hunger! At about 9pm we arrive at Kalgoorlie and are taken on a bus trip to see the Superpit Gold mine which is Australia’s largest open pit mine. Our female bus driver proudly tells us that the truck drivers in the pit are all women. She also takes us to see Hay Street which has 3 active, and legal, brothels, one of which is managed by one of her old school chums who used to be Harry and is now the same sex as the truck drivers. As we tour around the sky is filled with lightening flashes and it looks like we are in for rain on the way into Perth. Saturday December 6, 2003 Breakfast is with “Bruce” and a women who is on her way to live in Perth. It certainly seems to be a popular place! The track runs along the River Avon, which later turns into the Swan River. The Avon is the site of a yearly whitewater race of over 100 kms which ends just upstream of the city. We reach Perth at about 10:30am. A school Choir is there to sing Christmas carols, and presumably JPY is supposed to put in an appearance, but we have to leave in a shuttle bus to tour the city before heading to our hotel. Was JPY on the train? I guess we’ll never know. Lindley told us that JPY is a little fellow, so maybe we weren’t looking close enough to the ground. At least they gave us a poster to remember his absence by. The tour of Perth lasts several hours and covers much of the city and its surroundings including a stop at the Kings Park Botanical Gardens where Miranda buys a poster of venomous snakes; this is starting to become a little bit of an obsession! The driver drops us at our respective hotels. The most impressive stop is at St George’s College where the entrance is marked by a Flame tree which is covered in brilliant red flowers. Even though I’m not a tree person I make particular note of this as St George’s is where I’ll have to register for the conference tomorrow. Our hotel, Sullivans, is quite small although our room is quite large and offers a great view of the city skyline. Its even on the same street as St George’s, Mounts Bay Road, which turns out to be more than just a little busy with traffic. We catch the free CAT (which I believe stands for Central Area Transport) bus to downtown Perth and walk around city. I never see anyone I know when I’m out and about in San Diego but in minutes we see the couple from Switzerland and the Linguistics Professor. Maybe all the people we’re seeing in downtown Perth were on the train? Dinner that night is at Burswood Resort and Casino, but we refrain from gambling mainly because the games appear to be nothing like those is Las Vegas.