Sydney to Perth on the Indian Pacific Train

We're in Perth, the remotest state capital in Australia. (We're actually closer to Singapore right now than we are to Sydney.)  [Justin: Usually I just add my two bits over Meredith's shoulder as she writes these entries, but this time I'll add my comments in these brackets.  We're writing this entry from the Perth public library, which has free internet even to non-locals and a most efficient bookings system for the computers.  I like this place.]

As I mentioned before, we took a three-day train adventure to get here, which is, I'm now convinced, a spectacular way to see the country.

We were very, very excited when we hopped on board the Indian Pacific, our iron chariot and home for the next three nights. And surprised at the roominess of our quarters.

We're on a train!

That little metal thing by my elbow is a sink -- yes, a folding sink, which was immensely satisfying to shut, for some reason -- I'm leaning against one of two chairs and hanging onto the upper berth. The lower one folds down from the chairs. We even had little closets and nightlights and a trash can.

They gave us full run of a dining car and a lounge, which had free coffee and tea and little pastries at tea time. How commodious!

I extend my pinkie. Or try to.

[Justin: Meredith is reading a circa 1962 pocket book on Odd Things in Australia, of which there are many, as I learn every 5-7 minutes.]

We proceeded to take a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of photos that look like this.

And this.

And this.

[Justin: Either slackjawed amazement or I'm jetlagged.]

And this.

Our train rolled from Sydney through the endless Western suburbs and then the Blue Mountains, so called because of the haze of oil exuded by the gum trees (which, for the record, we didn't see, but we believe that they look blue sometimes). Our first stop the following morning was in Broken Hill, an active mining area; we rolled through at 6:40 a.m., though, so "active" isn't really the word for the town.  [Justin: But we did manage to get a real breakfast and avoid paying $3 for toast.]

Notice that Justin is, apparently, the only person out.

From there, we chugged on to Adelaide, where we visited the delightful Central Market, where we purchased delicious bread and hummus and cheese and other things to fortify us. (We did this, by the way, because food on the train was horrifying. You couldn't have made the pasta bake any worse if you had actively attempted to ruin it.) But Central Market was an unexpectedly great find -- if we lived in Adelaide, we'd shop there all the time.

We'd also patronize the lovely Exeter Hotel (NB: in Australia, a "Hotel" can be a restaurant, a bar, a hotel, or all three) all the time, too. They were playing Townes Van Zandt on the radio when we walked in and serving only the locally brewed beer on tap, two things we look upon with utmost approval. We didn't take any photos in Adelaide, though, except for this one, which I will share with you without too much commentary, because . . . well, because what can you say about this sculpture?

I think, maybe, that the Bean is a more successful piece, don't you? 
[Justin: no I did not just make an inappropriate joke]

[Justin: One anecdote that Meredith left out: as we were leaving the pub we walked down the street to find a cab.  A prim gay man wearing way too much foundation comes up to us and asks us, get this, what day of the week it was.  He might have been drinking.  I won't detail the rest of the conversation, but let's just say he complemented my shapely posterior, and we quickly moved on our way.]

We picked up a lot more passengers in Adelaide. A lot of them. And they all had something in common. When we arrived back into the station, we looked at each other, and then looked at our fellow passengers, and then looked back at each other in wonderment: we were younger than the youngest of the gigantic, hundred-plus person crowd by more than thirty years. Without exception.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it did create an atmosphere that I found constantly amusing. Picture two grubby, lovey-dovey backpackers in their cotton duds and flip flops hanging out in the lounge car with the rest of the cardigan-wearing crew. An announcement comes on, but it's a bit too faint to hear. A voice calls out, "Everyone turn your hearing aids up!"  [Justin: This joke played disturbingly well.  Meredith doesn't even think it was a joke.]  Our theory is that a train journey like ours is basically a land cruise. It is neither fast nor cheap, even accounting for our steeply discounted backpackers' fare, so the only people who can undertake the journey have both time and money -- something twenty- and thirty-somethings like us usually do not have in tandem. Anyways. We chugged along with the pensioners, gleefully watching their knitting and attempting to be as polite with our tea.

We rolled on through the night after Adelaide and were woken by a thunderstorm that can only happen in wide open spaces. A thunderhead in the distance lit up every few seconds with bolt upon bolt upon bolt. I got scared and crawled into Justin's bunk and we watched it flash and roil until the sun came up, and we began the crossing of the spectacularly flat and featureless Nullarbor Plain.  [Justin: It is so flat it appears that you can see the curvature of the earth.  Amazingly, it was wet as we passed through, which is a bit unusual.  We have never been so entranced by nothing.]

Here I am making a very weird face, standing on the longest straight stretch of train track on Earth. [Justin: 297 miles without a bend!]

That photo was taken when we stopped to refuel in Cook, a town with a gift shop, a prison, and a rock with a plaque on it.

Everyone was very excited to take pictures of the rock.
[Justin: This place was so unexciting I was excited to take pictures of the rock.]

From Cook, we rolled on through the night until Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Australia's largest outback city, which was not very large, in which we vainly searched for an establishment called the Hogs Breath (a bouncer actually told us it was imaginary) and wound up eating dubious curry at a cookie-cutter Irish pub and attempting not to get run over by the crazy Kalgoorlie drivers, all of whom seemed to be fleeing something very frightening and dangerous. And from there, we rolled on through the night to Perth, where we sit now in a very civilized public library, using this lightning-fast internet for free.

Our plans from here involve a car, and a bunch of road trips both up and down the coast. We plan on visiting Margaret River, a famed wine region; the Valley of the Giants, to see the old-growth tingle, jarrah and karri trees; and possibly making a giant loop of a road trip up north, through ten or more national parks and some lonely outback driving.

All for now. All aboard!

Meredith

PS: I forgot, earlier, to post about two lovely little happenings in Sydney. First, we are delighted to report that we met an extra from the Mike Meyers movie So I Married An Axe Murderer, which, in case you don't know, is one of Justin and my favorite films and might actually be responsible for the beginning of our relationship. (A story for another time. Rick & Anne's, the insanely delicious Berkeley breakfast joint, is also involved.) This actress -- who appears in the first scene in the bohemian cafe, right before Mike Meyers delivers his legendary "Woman, Woah - Man!" beat poem, and apparently hands Meyers something -- sold us our tickets at the Sydney Opera House. She was jazzed to chat with us about being in San Francisco in the eighties and being an "important extra" in what is indubitably the greatest movie ever made. The next time we watch it, we're keeping our eyes peeled for a lady with a blond bob and a headband.

Also, I just have to post this. Have you ever seen any headline more Australian?

That is all.