Saturday 10 March 2007

A whole lot of nothing

你好 ( Ni hao - I have it on 'good' authority that this means hello in Chinese). Acha tikka. Mes amis I have a wonderful show for you all today. Just you wait and see. Well first up is the beautiful scenescape of Adelaide. Adelaide is apparently a city. Though on reflection after walking about for a few minutes it's very small and offers no place to hide! So it was with happy inevitability that European touring group be re-formed for eine speile mit dem karten (arschloch und ring of fire - that incidently was NOT fixed by a Mr Daniel Reading, makes a big difference) order zwei. (sorry, once I've started in this pseudo german/french/english/hindi/chinese it's really hard to stop). We went round the Art Gallery for an educational tour and accidently mistook some art for a cleaning woman to much amusement - breaking the cardinal 'no happiness joy or laughter in an art gallery' rule, watched someone eat a plastic bag and paper themself to the wall. It's art daaaarling. Of course. Now this display of bonbon ---> surely that's art.

Once fully cultured up it's time to do something else. Like dance like there's no tomorrow. Alas with the recent invention of time, tomorrow arrived. Why why why why why? (sure all the rum was gone, but that was more to do with gravity than anything else, blame Isaac Newton not my slippery hands...). This was however remedied by the geographical invention of the beach and it's excellence as a frisbee pitch. And a sunburn haven. Youch. Spent the next few days living cheaply around the city, having appointments in the botanic gardens with teachers (no rendezvous to be heard of, what are we? french savages, tch), coveting all 26kgs of the second largest nugget of gold in the world (see left), squidging Bernie's belly in the evening (now that is a reference only a few will get, if you are not one of them then put the thought out of your mind forever, in fact do that even if you do know what I mean, permanent emotional scarring a risk). Sadly one can't eat cheap curry forever - had a great time in the market searching each stall for the cheapest carrots, then the cheapest potatoes, etc, not wanting to have to hand over more than 20 cents a piece. Thought we were going to be bamboozled by the ubiquitous 1.99 per kg onions, but at last le francais pulled through and spotted 1.49! Oh what joy. (oh and link to more photo's of G.O.R. is added to post below)

Then it was time to leave the land of the East behind on the Indian-Pacific railway. So to the train station I went. Obviously it was the wrong station. An hours walk later and the train was waiting (almost literally) just for me. Whoops. One of the greatest train journeys ever (apparently) across the Nullarbor Plain along the longest stretch of straight railway in the world (some 5million kms of it I think). These photos are a rough representation of what I saw over the past 38 hours - yes that long, I've come to the opinion that such train journeys are great only for certain people, and is it just a coincidence that all these people travel 'gold class'? I don't think so. Or actually for a true representation of my time read sporadically about Britney's current trauma (I. couldn't. Care. Less) and what the stars might wear to the Oscars (it was an old magazine) and maybe close your eyes for about 10 hours a piece to pass the time (viva le france for that 'help') whilst viewing what although isn't a lot is actually quite interesting for it's nothingness. And it really is red in the middle. And hot. And not a lot else...



This is the straight bit of railway.


Very straight.






I got a ruler out to confirm this situation (learning not to trust Australian superlatives) and can thus declare that 30cms of it is in fact as straight as indeed a ruler.






This is the view a little bit further on, around the 1,374km marker.




Still going...




A town in the middle of nowhere. Population 7. I kid you not. Ramsbury c'tait un metropole.




A little bit further on. Are we there yet?




The train resting in Kalgourlie-Boulder. Only another 498km's to go!





And a little more of my favourite scenery. Nothing.




It's all about the journey not the destination. Ah-hem, my arse (begs to differ).





But I have A.R.R.I.V.E.D. in Perth at last. Later than deutsche vier who was still in Adelaide when I left but I had what we call it in India, 'an experience'. Long live straight railways.

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