Last Train to Adelaide

Australian countryside passing by outside
my window.

As I write I find myself sitting in a lime-green dining cart, circa 1952. I currently find myself on the train known as "The Overland." It is a train in the service of The Great Southern Rail that gives transport from Melbourne to Adelaide. It is also the first leg of my newest adventure. Ironically, the first thing I am reminded of as I travel over 800 km across the southern parts of Australia is an episode of MacGyver I recently watched on Australian daytime TV. (Because I learned that the only things on in Australia during the daytime are, MacGyver, Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Hercules, and Perfect Strangers.) In the episode, Richard Dean Anderson found himself on a train heading through the unforgiving climate of the Indian subcontinent, when the train was predictably hijacked by a group of angry villagers who were looking for a westerner who swindled them out of all their money in exhcnage for posioned medicine. Mac, of course, had to intervene and used his considerable ingenuity and paper clips to turn the train into a time traveling device with Doc Brown, and they went back in time and saved Abraham Lincoln... or something... I might have dozed off while I was watching it. My point is that I feel kind of like Mac, prepared.

At about 6:30 in the morning, as I sat bleery eyed on a tram to Southern Cross Station where I would depart on my train, I had a sort of epihphany. As I stood there laden with all my worldly possessions I realized that I was not nervous. Normally, I would have expected a feeling of anxiety as I headed off to make my train, with a thousand different worries swiming through my head. "Can I make my train?" "Will the hostel be booked?" "What if I get lost?" "Do I have everything?" "How can I hit the thermal exhaust port when its only 1-meter wide?" etc, etc... Not this morning. As I looked out over the sun was rising above Melbourne and all I found was a sense of excitement and certainty that even if things went sideways I would be able to handle it. (After all, I am a resourceful, fit, and prepared young man with an above level IQ and an advanced degree.) So whether it was wrestling an alligator or debating the finer points of A Call to Arms, I knew I would make it through. And as I looked at my reflection in the darkened tram window that was when it hit me: I had forgotten my hair brush. I left it on the bathroom sink.

Hakuna Matata. I can buy another hairbrush. Life is good and I am on my way to a new place with new sights to see, new people to meet, and new experiences to be had. So far I have spent my day in realtive peace, watching the scenery go-by. The Australian landscape is beautiful, desolate by American standards, but surprisiginly beautiful. I have passed through wheat fields, mountains, vineyards, and finally savannah-like open fields where the view stretches for miles. This trip seems just what I need to shake off the sort of unthinking blaise I have come accustomed to when thinking about Australia. I find myself once again excited to see a land so vastly different from everything I have known. Everything old is suddenly new again.

The Overland, because why not have a deadly, freakish evolved
dinosaur bird as you symbol. Don't make the train angry it will
surround you in a coordinated attack with several other trains
 and slash you open from belly to chin.

It is precicesly that reason I have left the comfort and familiarity of Melbourne for greater parts unknown. I am thankful for the time I spent living and working in Melbourne as it allowed me a chance to adapt to life, culture, and accents in Australia. However, it had become comfortable in a way. It was a place I had made into a home, but this trip is not about comfort. In fact, I long ago decided this trip is about staying perpetually ahead of my comfort zone, not only as a means of seeing the sights but testing myself and my limits. So with that, this morning I bid farewell to my flat, the many people I had met and worked with over the past few months, and a transit system which caused me no small degree of grief. I am on my way to Adelaide where I will spend the next few days living and exploring my new surroundings before I pick up with a seven day camping trip through the outback.

Maybe it is just the fact that I spent the past two and a half hours watching one of my favorite movies of all time: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or maybe it is that I have found a new sense of adventure. I cannot be sure, but for now I have an indescribable urge to go out and explore, discover, (and possibly throw a Nazi from the train. "No ticket!")