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Rail Is Right: All Aboard for the Outback
| Article
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10517 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1993 |
4,132 Words |
| Author
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John Bremer And Anne Gardner
John Bremer is a former education editor for the Australian, a
national newspaper published in Sydney, and was philosopher in
residence at the University of Western Australia summer
schools, 1981-83; he now is an editor in the Modern Thought
section of THE WORLD & I. Anne Gardner, his daughter, is a
writer and educator who now lives in South Carolina. |
Sydney is built round the magnificent natural harbor of Port Jackson--not Botany Bay--and the view from Circular Quay is dominated by the immense Harbour Bridge to the left and the Opera House to the right. The Opera House, opened in 1973, symbolizes the sails of the First Fleet (and its successors) that brought the original European settlers to Australia. The Harbour Bridge, opened forty years earlier in 1933, symbolizes the conquering of the land.
The land was the challenge. How to tame it, cultivate it? How to traverse it? How to survive in it? The sea was a relatively known quantity, and it is still true that the five major cities of Australia are all on the coast, settled from the sea. This reversed the British presumption that the land was known, friendly, dependable, predictable, in short, manageable, and that the sea was turbulent, dangerous, menacing, and mysterious.
This presupposition is a state of mind, a deep-down part of the Australian subconscious; the urban dwellers, who make up 60 percent of the Australian population, do not know, do not care about the land. It is "beyond the black stump"; it is the outback. But the land has been explored, explored, exploited, hated, and loved by some. Among them are the railway men, who built and maintained the railway, beginning about 1850 with a line inland from Sydney to Parramatta-a mere dozen miles. Eventually, in 1970, the 2,500-mile-long line from Sydney to Perth was completed.
Nowadays, at Central Station in Sydney, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, a few minutes before departure time, the announcement is made: "Ladies and gentlemen. The Indian-Pacific will depart at 1:30 P.M. Will all persons not traveling kindly leave the train. Thank you." Those fortunate enough to make the sixty-five-hour journey will be taken back in time, seeing the country in some ways as the first explorers and settlers saw it, and, if they are attentive and imaginative, they might catch a glimpse of how the aborigines saw it and its origins in the Dreamtime. The Indian-Pacific, connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans, is also a modern, air-conditioned club, however. Travelers get chummy in short order, and a strange fact gradually becomes apparent. Many of the travelers are--or were--railway men.
Once a railway man, always a railway man. You recognize your fellows very quickly and fall into spinning endless yarns with them, over a beer or two, about the old days; and if there is a willing audience, you tell tales--some of them a bit tall about the country, about the work, about the
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