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Traveling Down Under, Part One: An American's Train Ride Through Timeless Australia
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12368 |
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LIFE
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1 / 1987 |
5,634 Words |
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Martin Morse Wooster
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Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for a picture of the finest street in a large American city.
--Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1898)
I went to Australia to escape. Washington, in the summer of 1985, was a town striving toward absolute boredom. The Democrats were still depressed over the 1984 elections, while the victorious Republicans were too busy stuffing their faces full of junkets, perks, and power to have anything useful to say. It was time to escape. It was time to have a mad adventure.
My favorite form of travel has always been by train. I've always wanted to wrestle with timetables, to chase the 7:40 to Mumbullah or the 8:40 to Thingbaba. But where should I go?
Europe? Everyone went to Europe. Canada? Too American. South Africa? Too violent. India? Too....well, too foreign. I wanted a place that was exotic, but not intimidating.
That left Australia. It was as large as the continental United States, but unknown to most Americans. I found that, by careful scheduling, I could use the Railways of Australia to make the longest circuit possible outside the United States, passing through four of Australia's five largest cities and five of its seven states in the process. I could also answer a question first posed by the British novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
Frayn traveled across the Australian continent to Alice Springs, in the heart of the outback. "This is nowhere," Frayn wrote. "People come here to see what nowhere looks like."
But what happened when you went beyond nowhere?
Melbourne, August 26, 1985
In the eighty-fifth year of the American Century, Melbourne had been transformed from an English city with American trappings to an American city with English trappings. The structure of the city, from its lumbering and frequent trolleys (the local joke called them "the perfect transportation system - for 1925") to its sturdy imperial architecture, still served as permanent reminders of Melbourne's colonial past. Indeed, when I walked out of the lobby of the century-old Great Southern Hotel, I almost thought I had strayed into one of London's grimier streets in the 1930s. One half-expected to see signs for the days' Age or Herald inquiring. "WILL HERR HITLER NEGOTIATE?"
Much of the popular culture was still British. Baseball scores were unobtainable, cricket scores common. Most of the books available were British imports. Even the punks dressed more to the dictates of Portobello Road than the East Village: Te
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