FEBRUARY 1, 2022 – Like most visitors in those days, I traveled “the eastern fringe”—the coastline between Sydney in the southeast and Port Douglas in the northeast, well above the Tropic of Capricorn. The big attraction was the Great Barrier Reef, yet much else influenced my itinerary—from Kuranda, a Garden of Eden deep in the rainforest of northeast Queensland, to the Blue Mountains National Park of the Great Dividing Range to the signature Opera House and other dazzlements of modern Sydney . . . along with a brief, now long-vanished romance, a sentimental description of which I discovered recently in a long-forgotten letter home.
But my defining experience of Australia was the 67-hour train ride from Sydney to Perth—with intervening “extraplanetary” stops. That other-worldly journey warrants its own chapter, which, like a distant horizon must wait its time.
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If the British who first landed in Australia were seafarers, their descendants—convicts, adventurers, and others destined for hardscrabble lives—turned swimmer, surfer, and snorkeler. Queensland, facing the Great Barrier Reef, was a magnet I couldn’t resist, however “land-based” I am in geographical outlook. Its central beacon was Cairns—pronounced, “Cans,” as universally as Dartmouth is uttered, “DART-muth.”
Reaching Cairns took long rides aboard tired trains. They seemed as oppressed by tropical heat and humidity as was I, a displaced Minnesotan. But time passing dense eucalyptus forests—and on occasion, sightings of their koala inhabitants—allowed for extended conversation with fellow travelers, including “Karen” and “Debbie,” two young women from Melbourne who’d recently left their jobs to explore Queensland.
Capricornian got us as far as Rockhampton, built astride the Tropic of Capricorn. When “Allan,” a young, friendly ticket agent getting off work found Karen, Debbie, and me waiting for the late-night train to Cairns, he invited us to enjoy the higher comforts of his nearby home. We jumped at the offer and reached his house-on-stilts moments before a deluge. He treated us to “tea”—Bundaberg rum and Australian meat pies—and while we feasted, Allan entertained us with his guitar, singing voice, and endless repertoire of Australian ballades. His happy generosity, we learned, camouflaged great sadness in his life.
Once our gracious host had seen us onto the train, my traveling companions and I reflected on life’s two-way street of giving and receiving. As guests receiving from a kind, giving soul, we decided, we’d given something important in return—our attention and camaraderie; this had cost us nothing but meant much to him, a lesson that I’ve tried hard to practice since.
We arrived in Cairns long after the youth hostel had closed for the night, so we settled for a treehouse (accessible by a long, dangling rope) in a municipal park. A few short hours later, we showered unexpectedly in an early morning, tropical downpour. After a breakfast of coconuts that I harvested furtively from the public domain, it was time to organize adventure onto the beach, a boat, and the Great Barrier Reef—the big draw for adventure-seekers the world over.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
