Day Three of the train ride: Smashing my head against the window is fun

Day Three
Hour Forty-One: The second night is complete. I got about five hours of sleep and it was pretty straight through the night as well. I grabbed my stuff and headed into the lounge and watched the country go by. The train went through Barton, a small town that consisted only of a small shack in the middle of nowhere. An Aboriginal man named Ziggy lives in the shack with no electricity or running water. He has helped to maintain the track, with engineers chucking cans of Milo at him. We’re approaching the 423 km stretch of straight track that is the longest in the world. Today will be another Scrabble-filled time.
Monday, March 24, 2008, 8:36 AM

Hour Forty-Four: I just finished one of the most astounding experiences of my life. We had a stopover in Cook, South Australia. When you hear the phrase “ghost town,” it brings to mind a desolate, un-inhabited place with a few abandoned buildings. Well, as we pulled into the station at Cook, it was announced that the town had a population of 5. It had at one point stationed the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but presently is only used to service the Railroad.

So now you can only imagine what sight greeted me when I stepped off. The whole town was in view. No one had lived there for a few years, so a number of buildings were nothing more than empty skeletons. I walked to the edge of town, being sure to look down with every step I took. Wearing flip flops had not been the best idea, as any snake that felt like chomping down on my foot would have an easy time with it.

Anyways, there was nothing for miles and miles surrounding the town. Just dry, Australian landscape with the barren foliage and red soil as far as the eye could see. Quite remarkable to think just how big this entire country/continent is and how little consists of so much.

We marched around Cook for about 20 minutes, completely blown away by the surroundings and the nothing that surrounded the horizon. Vacant. Everything. It was mesmerizing. As the alarm sounded, we got back on the train, and pulled away from Cook. I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a place like this again. To be surrounded by nothing in the middle of nowhere? That’s quite an ambiguous statement to make, but I don’t know of a better way to describe it. Check out the picture below to give you an idea of what it was like:
Monday, March 24, 2008, 10:14 AM

Hour Forty-Seven: I’m not even sure what hour it is at this point. We just changed time zones as we went from South Australia into Western Australia. The signpost commemorating it was a big rock along with a sign. The expansive landscape continues to be rocks, small, dry bushes, and red soil, mixed in with nothing. Not a living, breathing thing for miles. The train is rattling along at a steady pace, and I’m sitting here writing and watching 30 Rock. Trying to work on my Israel trip piece too. It’s gotten to 21,000 words, with five or six days left to describe.

An announcement on the train said that we had travelled more than 2,300 km while still 1,300 km from Perth. Amazing to think that in the time that has elapsed, a plane could have flown me from Perth to Sydney and back like four or five times at least. I will now forever be thankful for planes and the speed at which they take us in modern day travel.
Monday, March 24, 2008, 11:22 AM (switched to Australia Pacific Time)

Hour Fifty: Less than twenty four hours until we arrive at our destination. The travel is starting to get to me as I feel like I am constantly staring at the same scenery over and over again. The train passed through the town of Forrest; by town I mean a landing strip operated by two people. You read that correctly. Two people live in the town of Forrest. I don’t even know if that’s possible to call it a town.

Things are getting so difficult that we arrived in a town named Rawlinna and I marvelled at the fact there was something else to look at. Other than staring at the barren wasteland, I lost another game of Scrabble and have almost watched every episode of 30 Rock. The Israel writing is chugging along as well. I’m not struggling to keep my sanity, but it is definitely being eroded away, bit by bit.
Monday, March 24, 2008, 2:58 PM

Hour Fifty-Three: We are passing through Boulder a town near Kalgoorlie. Apparently, Kalgoorlie isn’t just some smack in the middle of nowhere ghost town. But it’s a town smack in the middle of nowhere with a population 30,000 people. That’s quite a surprise. The last few hours have been just miles and miles of endless desert. We went through the 478 km of straight train track that seemed to go on forever. My mental state is still decent. My stomach hurts from the microwave burger that I ate combined with gross snacks. Ew. I’m hoping to see some roos tonight.
Monday, March 24, 2008, 6:36 PM

Hour Fifty-Eight: The train is now pulling away from Kalgoorlie, WA (streets pictured above). What an underwhelming town in the middle of now where. We basically marched around the block twice, and saw nearly all that the center had to offer. It was similar to Broken Hill, in the sense that the majority of it consisted of strip malls with different shops and pubs. They even made you chuck any fruit or other foods that wouldn’t meet quarantine. State to state quarantine is ridiculous. It’s all the same country.

With so little to do, we managed to find a place to eat. Dave, Becca, and I ended up at the Exchange Hotel, at the “Wild West Saloon” which basically meant that the bartenders were wearing nothing but underwear. And they were all women. It was such a bizarre experience, as I had never before seen anything like that. It made me cringe to look at the reality of what life is in such a broken, far off part of the world. Those poor girls thought that wearing nothing but lingerie to pour drinks is something that is okay. And it is far from it, in my opinion. We still ate there anyway and the food happened to be quite good. While Becca and I ordered, Dave took a picture of us at the bar. The girl taking the order flipped out, as apparently you aren’t allowed to take pictures of the girls as that objectifies them. Faulty logic anyone? You can’t really claim to be objectified when you are already walking around with no clothes on. Such a puzzling fact of life.

I’m feeling good about the trip. It’s on the final leg, the last night of trying to sleep in a seat. I’ve gotten to see such a huge part of the country, and while it has been difficult more than it has been easy, the payoff is incredible. It gives me a sense of what life was like 100 years ago or so, when the only way to reach Perth was, well, you couldn’t. Amazing to think that the technology and developments of the last century have opened up a massive world. And this is only train travel here. Planes can take us pretty much anywhere in the world. Despite this technology, there is such an ugly side to life itself, and one ponders the origins of that, without accounting into it any measure of sin or God in the picture. Just something to think about: shouldn’t the advancement and “evolution” of the human race be marked by new levels of peace and harmony? How come as we get to a high level of technology, should our social patterns be reflected in the same manner? I could go on and on about this, but I’m about to play Dave in Scrabble. I really hope that I beat him, and that I get to talk to Sarah tonight. I only had service for the first time in 19 hours in Kalgoorlie and don’t know how long it will last here. The best part? This statue of a guy who was a water fountain:
Monday, March 24, 2008, 10:57 PM