There are three, roughly parallel, long-distance rail lines in Queensland. Each goes deep into the interior and then just ends. It looks like terminal towns like Longreach exist because people took the train there, realized there was no way to get anywhere else, and decided to make the best of it. Longreach has an airport now, so I have a third choice besides taking the train back and becoming a ranch hand.
Queensland Rail's long distance trains are exactly as old as a train can be without being historic. The compartments are the same design as Via's, but the Murphy bed is hard and narrow, like a fold-out ironing board. There seemed to be only two of us on the car, because only two compartments were open. In fact, two were open because the very nice attendant was going to offer to switch me to the other, because it was larger. It's not always a great sign when you're the only one doing something, but the train was fine; I was alone on the car mostly because no one else was stupid enough to come to far-interior Queensland in February.
There are a few simple tricks that allow one to travel in a small train compartment with comfort and dignity. However, I have no idea what they are. A large room just meant my stuff was scattered over twice the area. I still misplaced my wallet, and spent twenty minutes hunting for it and developing a theory about when and how and by whom I'd been robbed. It was a good theory, though parts of it probably need to be reexamined.
When I woke up in the morning, we were sitting in the dark in what turned out to be Rockhampton. Up until Rockhampton, the train follows the coast. From there, it cuts inland, almost exactly following the Tropic of Capricorn. Alongside is a freshly re-paved two-lane highway, a shining black trade artery with white road trains pulsing back and forth. There are evenly spaced billboards as you come to a town. One about bushfire prevention, one with a politician's face with "For a Stronger Gregory" underneath, and a Burma Shave-type series about the dangers of fatigue (it kills).
Over a few hours, the dirt reddens, the grass yellows, the trees thin, the ratio of 4WDs to cars rises, and the towns shrink and spread out. Their names get odder. After Rockhampton come Dingo, Bluff, Emerald, Alpha, and Beta. Dingo has a dusty, house-lined street with uniformed schoolboys playing rugby in the middle of it. Later on, a mountain of black asphalt is being used to pave a huge part of the prairie for no obvious reason. Then land with lush, lime-green grass, lined with poplars, or their probably-venomous Australian counterparts. There's a sign for a coal museum, but what actually comes along is the large and gleaming new "International Coal Centre". I bet it could clear up a lot of the misconceptions I have about global warming.
After Emerald, a billboard claims we're in the "Sapphire Lands" ("stub your toe on a fortune!"). There are patches of dead trees and places that surely have the word 'gulch' in their name. Wire fences and cattle gates with hand-written signs on them about not letting the cows out while they're grazing. Dehydrated swamps -- places that probably flood occasionally and then dry out completely until the next time. Long dirt roads stretching off into the grass, with signs at the head that say "Reproductive Services". A bathtub in a random spot in a desolate field, far from any roads, as though deposited there by a glacier.
This is the part of the country with famously large cattle stations -- chunks of land the size of Belgium with nothing but a herd of cows and a family of four. The cows look a little more independent than most. There were some people from cattle stations on the boat to the Torres Strait. They said some of their animals, the goats, I think, were basically feral. When they needed goats -- I didn't ask what for, I assume it was something nice -- they went and rounded them up. It was more of a game park than a ranch.
We pass the driveway of a dusty homestead flanked by huge hand-painted signs that say "4" and "SALE". Another is abandoned, with a battered red windmill spinning on the roof and a fine crop of termite mounds in the yard. Inner Queensland really belongs to the termites. We pass Jericho, the capital of a thirsty land of stunted trees and old barbed wire. Kangaroos appear in groups of two or three or four. Mostly, they bounce away in alarm. The occasional big male stares the train down, trying to psych himself up to believing he can take it. One is dead by the tracks. But by the highway, it's just carnage.
I stayed in a motor inn. It's just across from the train station, and I booked it because I didn't much want to tow my pack for miles in the dark in the middle of the tropics. At the desk was a man with a nervous laugh having a chat with what I'm going to say was a trucker, here for a rest after another day smashing up kangaroos with his road train. In reception, a few crates of red wine were for sale at $10 a bottle.
I turned on the light in the room, and a huge bug relaxing in the middle of the floor sighed and shuffled off under one of the beds. I didn't look for it. I just assumed it had left the building, closed off the hole behind it, and left a tiny note apologizing for the intrusion. There was also a strong smell of carpet deodorizer, a long mirror frosted with the sneezes of a thousand long-distance truckers, and a pair of gigantic armchairs, which I didn't use because I was afraid of what their many folds could be hiding. They look somehow like chairs a lot of truckers have had heart attacks in.
In the early morning, a gang of white birds were screaming and crying above the Anzac park across the street. The park is a wedge of grass with an anti-aircraft gun. Every town has an Anzac park, and every Anzac park has a piece of artillery. After the axis surrendered to the allies, the allied armies surrendered to the Australian parks commission. You could fit out a respectable army with what's lying around the country's memorial parks.
As I'm walking along the street, a kangaroo turns the corner and comes bounding along towards me. It passes within about twenty feet and then hangs a right. Who's naive now, travel guides that said "you're not just going to see kangaroos hopping down the street"? There are 4 more lazing on the green lawn of one of the motels; they hang out on motel lawns because motels water them. In Longreach, the motel lawns are green, and the rest of the land is a red desert scattered with "please conserve water" signs.
The motel has a restaurant, and, as you are still in Australia, the cheapest main is a $28 wild mushroom risotto. It doesn't seem like a good risk, so I dig deeper into my stash of energy bars and wait for breakfast.
In the morning, the restaurant doesn't open, so I hike back down the highway to a pair of gas stations. I pick the one that looks likeliest to be able to furnish a gourmet breakfast and come away with some juice, one of those bottled iced coffee things, something called a "Picnic Bar", and some of that outback trucker's staple, "Mrs. May's All Natural 100% Vegan Pumpkin Crunch". (It turns out that there's a useful strip of bakeries and stores back away from the highway, but I don't find it until I'm about to leave.)
The greeting in Longreach is "how ya goin', mate" (sometimes, just "howagoon"). I still don't know what the expected response is. "Good, how are you?" sounds foreign and stilted. I'll try "capital, my good man" and see how it plays.
In Longreach, the Australian instinct to construct botanic gardens has produced a long, thin, wilted park stretched out along the highway. The gardens are where clouds of black flies go to feed on tourists. I walk through a bit later in the day, and the tropical sun is intense; every ray that misses you bounces off the desert and catches you on the rebound. Here and there are pieces of public-park workout equipment, in case you want to stop amid the unbearable heat and flies and tear off a few crunches.
Further along is the Qantas museum and the Stockman's Hall of Fame. The hall of fame was opened by the queen. Seems like it's enough to stop nearby -- to stand where the Queen stood, gaze, as the Queen gazed, at the dusty splendour of the Australian outback, and think, as the Queen thought, "what the hell am I doing in Longreach?"
Going to the airport early seemed smart. It's new glassy and air conditioned, but Queenslanders tend to keep the AC up around 25. The departures lounge shows daytime TV that's worse than all the flies and all the sun and all the kangaroo fleas and all the dodgy motels in the city.
I flew away on a half-full Dash 8 that shivered and bounced around the sky like it didn't belong in it. From above, you can see that Longreach, despite what it looks like from the ground, is an oasis. Around it is true desert. Here and there a line of dry trees stands to mark the memory of a river. The rest is rust-coloured dust. A few perfectly straight dirt roads run though it: Those outback roads where a breakdown can be fatal.
Queensland Rail's long distance trains are exactly as old as a train can be without being historic. The compartments are the same design as Via's, but the Murphy bed is hard and narrow, like a fold-out ironing board. There seemed to be only two of us on the car, because only two compartments were open. In fact, two were open because the very nice attendant was going to offer to switch me to the other, because it was larger. It's not always a great sign when you're the only one doing something, but the train was fine; I was alone on the car mostly because no one else was stupid enough to come to far-interior Queensland in February.
There are a few simple tricks that allow one to travel in a small train compartment with comfort and dignity. However, I have no idea what they are. A large room just meant my stuff was scattered over twice the area. I still misplaced my wallet, and spent twenty minutes hunting for it and developing a theory about when and how and by whom I'd been robbed. It was a good theory, though parts of it probably need to be reexamined.
When I woke up in the morning, we were sitting in the dark in what turned out to be Rockhampton. Up until Rockhampton, the train follows the coast. From there, it cuts inland, almost exactly following the Tropic of Capricorn. Alongside is a freshly re-paved two-lane highway, a shining black trade artery with white road trains pulsing back and forth. There are evenly spaced billboards as you come to a town. One about bushfire prevention, one with a politician's face with "For a Stronger Gregory" underneath, and a Burma Shave-type series about the dangers of fatigue (it kills).
Over a few hours, the dirt reddens, the grass yellows, the trees thin, the ratio of 4WDs to cars rises, and the towns shrink and spread out. Their names get odder. After Rockhampton come Dingo, Bluff, Emerald, Alpha, and Beta. Dingo has a dusty, house-lined street with uniformed schoolboys playing rugby in the middle of it. Later on, a mountain of black asphalt is being used to pave a huge part of the prairie for no obvious reason. Then land with lush, lime-green grass, lined with poplars, or their probably-venomous Australian counterparts. There's a sign for a coal museum, but what actually comes along is the large and gleaming new "International Coal Centre". I bet it could clear up a lot of the misconceptions I have about global warming.
After Emerald, a billboard claims we're in the "Sapphire Lands" ("stub your toe on a fortune!"). There are patches of dead trees and places that surely have the word 'gulch' in their name. Wire fences and cattle gates with hand-written signs on them about not letting the cows out while they're grazing. Dehydrated swamps -- places that probably flood occasionally and then dry out completely until the next time. Long dirt roads stretching off into the grass, with signs at the head that say "Reproductive Services". A bathtub in a random spot in a desolate field, far from any roads, as though deposited there by a glacier.
This is the part of the country with famously large cattle stations -- chunks of land the size of Belgium with nothing but a herd of cows and a family of four. The cows look a little more independent than most. There were some people from cattle stations on the boat to the Torres Strait. They said some of their animals, the goats, I think, were basically feral. When they needed goats -- I didn't ask what for, I assume it was something nice -- they went and rounded them up. It was more of a game park than a ranch.
We pass the driveway of a dusty homestead flanked by huge hand-painted signs that say "4" and "SALE". Another is abandoned, with a battered red windmill spinning on the roof and a fine crop of termite mounds in the yard. Inner Queensland really belongs to the termites. We pass Jericho, the capital of a thirsty land of stunted trees and old barbed wire. Kangaroos appear in groups of two or three or four. Mostly, they bounce away in alarm. The occasional big male stares the train down, trying to psych himself up to believing he can take it. One is dead by the tracks. But by the highway, it's just carnage.
I stayed in a motor inn. It's just across from the train station, and I booked it because I didn't much want to tow my pack for miles in the dark in the middle of the tropics. At the desk was a man with a nervous laugh having a chat with what I'm going to say was a trucker, here for a rest after another day smashing up kangaroos with his road train. In reception, a few crates of red wine were for sale at $10 a bottle.
I turned on the light in the room, and a huge bug relaxing in the middle of the floor sighed and shuffled off under one of the beds. I didn't look for it. I just assumed it had left the building, closed off the hole behind it, and left a tiny note apologizing for the intrusion. There was also a strong smell of carpet deodorizer, a long mirror frosted with the sneezes of a thousand long-distance truckers, and a pair of gigantic armchairs, which I didn't use because I was afraid of what their many folds could be hiding. They look somehow like chairs a lot of truckers have had heart attacks in.
In the early morning, a gang of white birds were screaming and crying above the Anzac park across the street. The park is a wedge of grass with an anti-aircraft gun. Every town has an Anzac park, and every Anzac park has a piece of artillery. After the axis surrendered to the allies, the allied armies surrendered to the Australian parks commission. You could fit out a respectable army with what's lying around the country's memorial parks.
As I'm walking along the street, a kangaroo turns the corner and comes bounding along towards me. It passes within about twenty feet and then hangs a right. Who's naive now, travel guides that said "you're not just going to see kangaroos hopping down the street"? There are 4 more lazing on the green lawn of one of the motels; they hang out on motel lawns because motels water them. In Longreach, the motel lawns are green, and the rest of the land is a red desert scattered with "please conserve water" signs.
The motel has a restaurant, and, as you are still in Australia, the cheapest main is a $28 wild mushroom risotto. It doesn't seem like a good risk, so I dig deeper into my stash of energy bars and wait for breakfast.
In the morning, the restaurant doesn't open, so I hike back down the highway to a pair of gas stations. I pick the one that looks likeliest to be able to furnish a gourmet breakfast and come away with some juice, one of those bottled iced coffee things, something called a "Picnic Bar", and some of that outback trucker's staple, "Mrs. May's All Natural 100% Vegan Pumpkin Crunch". (It turns out that there's a useful strip of bakeries and stores back away from the highway, but I don't find it until I'm about to leave.)
The greeting in Longreach is "how ya goin', mate" (sometimes, just "howagoon"). I still don't know what the expected response is. "Good, how are you?" sounds foreign and stilted. I'll try "capital, my good man" and see how it plays.
In Longreach, the Australian instinct to construct botanic gardens has produced a long, thin, wilted park stretched out along the highway. The gardens are where clouds of black flies go to feed on tourists. I walk through a bit later in the day, and the tropical sun is intense; every ray that misses you bounces off the desert and catches you on the rebound. Here and there are pieces of public-park workout equipment, in case you want to stop amid the unbearable heat and flies and tear off a few crunches.
Further along is the Qantas museum and the Stockman's Hall of Fame. The hall of fame was opened by the queen. Seems like it's enough to stop nearby -- to stand where the Queen stood, gaze, as the Queen gazed, at the dusty splendour of the Australian outback, and think, as the Queen thought, "what the hell am I doing in Longreach?"
Going to the airport early seemed smart. It's new glassy and air conditioned, but Queenslanders tend to keep the AC up around 25. The departures lounge shows daytime TV that's worse than all the flies and all the sun and all the kangaroo fleas and all the dodgy motels in the city.
I flew away on a half-full Dash 8 that shivered and bounced around the sky like it didn't belong in it. From above, you can see that Longreach, despite what it looks like from the ground, is an oasis. Around it is true desert. Here and there a line of dry trees stands to mark the memory of a river. The rest is rust-coloured dust. A few perfectly straight dirt roads run though it: Those outback roads where a breakdown can be fatal.
