POETS UNITED - NAMES WITH LOVE

“There’s something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.” - Paul Simon

This week’s Poets United Mid-Week Motif is “Saying the Names With Love”, a thematic tribute to the names of the places we love. Let me take you with my poem on a great train journey across Australia.

The Indian Pacific is an Australian passenger rail service that operates between Sydney, on the Pacific Ocean, and Perth, on the Indian Ocean. It is one of the few truly transcontinental trains in the world. The train first ran in February 1970 after the completion of gauge conversion projects in South and Western Australia. The train’s route includes the world’s longest straight stretch of railway track, a 478-kilometre (297 mi) stretch of the Trans-Australian Railway over the Nullarbor Plain.

The service was originally operated jointly by the New South Wales Government Railways, South Australian Railways, Commonwealth Railways and Western Australian Government Railways, until February 1993 when Australian National took full ownership. In October 1997 the Indian Pacific was sold to Great Southern Rail. A one-way trip originally took 75 hours, but with line and efficiency improvements it now takes 65 hours. The train currently has four classes, branded as Platinum, Gold Service and Red Service Sleeper and Red Service Daynighter and also a motorail service to convey passengers’ motor vehicles.

Train Ticket

My birthday gift came in an envelope –
Thick, creamy paper, hand-addressed –
Stout enough to enclose sheaves of printed matter;
No sender’s name, a fascinating mystery…

Intrigued, I open carefully to find within:
A train ticket and an itinerary –
Sydney to Perth, transcontinental,
On the Indian Pacific…

The sender knows me well, I think,
And makes my fervent wish, reality –
A train journey of thousands of miles
Across this great wide land of ours.

From Sydney, the Harbour City,
Westward through the green, fertile valleys
Of New South Wales, beyond the rolling hills
And distant mountains of Condobolin,

To the rugged Outback,
And the lavishly painted desert, red earth
And rich ore-hearted, rocky outcrops
Of silver encrusted, Broken Hill…

Then South, to the city of churches:
Adelaide, beside the River Torrens,
And close enough to the Barossa Valley
To grow tipsy on sunny Summer afternoons.

From Crystal Brook, going North,
To Port Augusta, a hub of industry and trade,
Close to the violet-tinged Flinders Ranges,
And the wild beauty of Arkaroola and Pichi Richi.

Then West, again through Cook,
And the straightest, longest stretch
Of railroad track, the world over,
Three hundred miles across the arid Nullarbor.

To Kalgoorlie, golden city of mines,
Elegant, stately and forlorn amongst the rocks –
The racecourse, grand old hotels and the Skimpies,
Recalling a rowdy past and miners’ boisterous antics.

And then on the last leg of the journey,
To cosmopolitan Perth, the jewel of the West,
A city of parks and rivers, sandy beaches, hills
And bustling city life and skyscrapers.

A journey, a gift, and an expectation,
Who else could have given me this, but you?
At end of the journey my greater gift awaits;
Taking the slow suburban train to Fremantle,
I know you will be there to greet me
At our old rendezvous point up on the Round House…