Travelling Hopefully - National Capital Edition

As has become something of a habit of mine I left hearth and home to spend the Australia Day long weekend in Canberra, putatively the capital of my great nation, for a wargaming competition.  Yet this year the journey would be different.  For once I would not be travelling with my friend Ivan.  I broke this sad news to him and he covered his disappointment with well simulated delight.  On this occasion he would be deprived of my cow commentary on the journey south (I made up for it when he gave me a lift home).

The reason for this change was work related. I needed to go down a day early so I could put in some hours at our Canberra office before officially swapping my conflicts analyst hat for that of ASL superstar.  The change did give me an opportunity to indulge my passion for train travel.  I could make my way to Canberra in airconditioned comfort and it would only take about an hour longer than travelling by car.

I had never caught this particular train before and I approached Central railway station with enthusiasm.  Perhaps the journey would compensate for the destination.  The first thing I noticed on taking my seat was that my mere presence had dropped the average age of the passengers by a couple of years.  Trains appear to be as popular with the elderly in Australia as they are in America.  I suspect its because trains bear a reassuring resemblance to coffins so it can count as preparation time.

Somewhat to my surprise the train slid out of the station more or less on time.  Less surprising was the announcement immediately afterwards that the extreme heat conditions meant that we would have to travel more slowly than usual presumably to stop the rails from melting under us.  Inside the train we were suffering from the extreme heat as well.  Perhaps as a reaction the air conditioning appeared to be stuck on perma frost.  People were shivering and turning blue.  Some of the more enterprising passengers had taken advantage of the fact that the sudden cold snap had carried off a few of the more feeble elderly to skin them and use their hides as blankets.  Fortunately we got to Canberra before we ran out of food.

Despite the heat and the cold we rolled fairly efficiently through the southern suburbs of Sydney which do seem to go on for quite a while.  After an apparently endless sea of lowest common denominator housing we encountered fields and even the occasional cow although suburbs kept popping up suddenly just when I thought we were done with them.  After that we turned up in the Southern Highlands with rolling hills and quaint villages.  Well, I say quaint villages but actually the bits I could see from the train looked rather like suburbs of Sydney dumped in a rural locale by a vengeful god of second rate town planning.  Still it was pleasant enough and Bundanoon was so genuinely quaint that I suspect the whole place is owned by the tourist board and charges visitors admission.

I don't actually know how high the Southern Highlands are.  I suspect they fall into the category of  "a bit lumpy" as opposed to "bring your own oxygen".  Certainly I didn't notice the training actually climbing as I do when I go to the Blue Mountains.  On the other hand there was a definite downwardness to the journey once we left Bundanoon.  Once out of the Southern Not Quite Lowlands the terrain flattened out into gently rolling farmland.  At least I assume it was farmland.  Nature isn't usually that careful to keep its lawns neat.  In fact nature is a lousy steward of nature, we should totally take that over and tidy it up.

This being an intercity train I was given the opportunity to purchase delicious hot food.  I steadfastly avoided this and purchased a sausage roll instead.  The thing about delicious food on trains is that it isn't.  I would rather go for something reliably dreadful like a sausage roll than get my hopes even briefly up before being dashed when the supposedly delicious food is placed in front of me.  I washed down my sausage roll with a piping hot cup of brown.  It was supposedly coffee but they could have claimed it was tea, ovaltine, meat extract, gravy or watercolour paint with equal chance of being believed.

With the scenery taking on a distinctly agricultural bent I would normally have started to go nuts about cows to the exasperation of my fellow travellers.  I didn't do it this time because I was already afraid the old dear sitting next to me wouldn't survive the trip.  But I can resist the temptation no longer so;

Cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, horse, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, oh wait maybe that one was a sheep, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, definitely a sheep, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, holy shit a deer, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow.

Goulburn took me by surprise.  I definitely wouldn't have let it get close to me if I had been paying attention.  When we drive down we tend to bypass Goulburn.  From what I could see from the railway station that was a valid decision.  Just out of Goulburn there is a heritage rail centre.  Memo to the heritage rail centre; you can't just dump a load of rolling stock in one place and leave it to rot and call it a heritage rail centre.  A more accurate term would be, scrap heap.  But Goulburn wasn't my destination (despite the presence of a world class super max prison) and soon my faithful little train was rattling slowly along melting raillines to Canberra, capital of Australia.  Where politicians and heroin addicts jostle to see who can squeeze the most money out of the passers by who have inadvertantly wound up in the place.

Despite the warnings we were only about ten minutes late.  A taxi then managed to take twenty minutes to get me from the station to my hotel.  The trouble with Canberra is that it is laid out in such an open way that travelling around the corner requires a support team.  Couple this with the fact that the road network was designed by a person with an unhealthy obsession with spiral staircases and you can see why they are currently cutting down half the trees in the city in order to install a light rail system to service a population that the New South Wales government probably wouldn't consider large enough to need roads.  Still in Canberra I was and prepared to do cardboard battle in the ASL tournament ahead.