Day 66 : Lost in Transportation – “I need to get off this train. Now.”
If I thought the train journey from Brisbane to Hervey Bay was painful, I had no idea what lay in store for me on the overnight jaunt north to Airlie Beach.
Even now, sitting in Kuala Lumpur’s humidity and typing up my memories of the nightmarish event, I still can not fully comprehend, never mind see the funny side of, the absolute horror that befell me. I’m getting ahead of myself …
We decide to head north to the Whitsunday Islands by train. It’s a fourteen hour voyage through dark, inhospitable Australian hinterland, and considering it starts (or was supposed to start – the train was late due to overbooking and the company’s inability to find spare carriages) at 8pm, this part of our journey is going to entail sleeping through the night in a metal tube laden with some of the weirdest people on the planet. I’m not sure what attracts crazies to overnight train trips but, as we rocket north to a destination I’m not even sure exists, I soon have more things to worry about.
Myself and Sheila are separated during this ordeal (we go quietly, it wasn’t like Sophie’s Choice or anything) as, unless you fork out for a double berth (we tried, they were sold out), passengers are confined to sleeping with two other strange people of the same gender in a cabin that looks like it couldn’t adequately accommodate a pair of midgets never mind three grown adults.
I leave Sheila in a nearby berth with some peculiar woman rocking gently back and forth on the seats (which transform into “beds” upon request) and enter my berth. There’s one gent there, sitting and quietly reading what appear to be notes. He’s a man in his fifties, maybe sixty, and it’s only when he doesn’t move as I try to pass him with my bags do I realise that he’s disabled.
We never exchange names but talk a great deal over the following hours about a myriad of topics. He’s actually English and has been living in Australia since 1976 an, despite over thirty years on the continent, he has managed to retain his accent and a quintessentially British outlook on life. He tells me how much he enjoys travelling by train and imparts reams of local knowledge of the land we’re passing through I doubt I would have ever received if not in the company of such a sage-like elder of the area.
Soon enough it’s time to sleep, and I notice I’ve been lumbered with the top bunk, my new friend happy to simply lay on the seat below. The third member of our happenin’ gang seems to have never turned up, leaving the middle berth forever unused. This works out well for him though as he now has extra space between where he’s sleeping and the bottom of my bunk. For me, it makes no difference. I’m still entombed, vampire-like, in an area that is borderline torturous in size.
Sleeping on an overnight train is a little like eating on a rollercoaster. The practice comprises taking a very natural and common act you’ve been doing since the womb, twists it so that it is vaguely reminiscent of what you’re familiar with, and then injects it into a totally foreign and warped environment. I should add that this observation is not based on travelling by extravagant means such as the Orient Express, which I’m sure is a pleasant and thrilling experience. No, we were on the Sunlander – a train designed it seems to inflict as much discomfort on its sleeping inhabitants as possible.
I cagily climb into the top bunk and, though not usually someone who suffers from claustrophobia, the feeling of entrapment immediately grips me. My nose is about five or six inches from the roof of the cabin, and there are twin straps taut beside be between the bed’s edge and the roof, obviously to prevent me from rolling over in my sleep and plummeting to the cabin floor below. Or just committing suicide in general. Careening over the edge and just ending it all a remote yet plausible thought.
Just as I think my little capsule hell can’t get any worse, I hear the telltale sound of aerosol from below. The first thought that crosses my mind is that my new travel companion is simply freshening up. I’m not partial to dousing myself in spray before going to bed (or at anytime for that matter) but who am I to question other males of the species and their nightly rituals? When a foul smell hits me in the face like a thundering elbow, I rethink my theory to cover the possibility that the chap below has just let one off and is attempting to mask the foul stench wafting up toward me on the top bunk. It’s only when I realise the smell is less fart and more faecal matter do I understand that my unfortunate disabled bunk-buddy is attempting to cover-up something much more insidious and heart-wrenching.
Truth be told, I feel bad even mentioning this crazy episode from my around the world trip. It’s embarrassing, more for the guy in question that what I had to unfortunately endure. I’ll therefore leave it to your imagination as to what exactly was going on below me. Needless to say, as the stench lingers, I start to gag and my “shite or flight” tendency kicks into over-drive.
An hour into the endurance test I decide to escape. I’m not sure where the hell I’m going to go, but anywhere than here sounds good at this point. I somehow wriggle back into some combats and a pair of socks that appear intent on fleeing the room by their own accord.
I contort and twist my way out of the cramped sarcophagus, pain lancing through my feet as I unwisely balance on the rungs of the ladder as I try to shimmy my way down. He’s awake and asks if I want the light on. As imagery of what it must be like to spend time in the company of another man while incarcerated in prison clouds my mind, I utter no and bolt out the door. It’s nearly two in the morning. The train shuffles over the dark track below at a leisurely gait, secretly concealing the actual speed we must be travelling at.
The carriages are deserted, the only sound the repetitive hush as metal displaces air, starkly apparent when passing between the railcars. I find the dining cart and it’s empty. Considering it’s the middle of the night, I would have been more surprised to find it otherwise. I sit here for a few minutes feeling sorry for myself. Not angry per se, but definitely unhappy that, once again, things just can’t be simple. I had some idea that travelling by train at night would not be the most pleasant of experiences. I didn’t expect to be fumigated in the process, however.
After a short time trying to balance my feet on a nearby chair, I move to the next carriage where I find a more amiable sleeping set up. The crescent seating couches encircling the simple tables are perfect for curling up on. Apparently, I’m not the only person who has deducted this delicious realisation as there are two other people ahead of me wrapped around the tables and soundly asleep. A large, gruff man sporting a prodigious, white mountain beard sits at the doorway. I initially take him to be staff but, examining the redness of his eyes and the way he ushers me onwards, I quickly realise that he’s also in search of slumber, just too big to fit on the arc-like makeshift beds.
Fatigue and relief in equal measures wash over me, and after curling into the foetal position, I’m asleep within seconds. Of course, it’s all too good to be true, and soon enough I’m dragged from my haven by a large female train employee who is now informing the four of us that we’re not allowed sleep here and that we’re to go back to our seats or cabins at once. One of my fellow stowaways contests the request, begging for clemency, stating how the woman in her berth is snoring like a pneumatic drill and if there is any spare seats anywhere. I feel like asking if said woman has shit herself because, if not, I have your hand beat, lady. The conductor flicks through a manifest and shakes her head, barks no, and moves off. We’re to leave immediately.
I contemplate just walking the train all night but know it’s probably impossible to hide from the people whose job it is to throw people off the back at night. I’m not sure how much sleep I’ve gotten but, and I can’t believe I’m contemplating this, maybe I could go back to the cabin and, somehow, sleep in my reeking coffin.
Returning to the scene of the crime it appears I was hardly missed. I am wise, however, that there is not a lot my stinky friend could really say regarding my absence. I make some excuse about claustrophobia (not really an excuse actually) and, still breathing through my mouth, I vault back up into the heavens and harden my mind against my dilemma; fortifying my thoughts against the reality of my surroundings and focusing on the task at hand. Sleeping in a sewer.
I awake what feels like minutes later and rendezvous with Sheila in the very dining carriage I was rumbled sleeping in only a few hours previous. She looks tired. I look furious. I don’t really know what to say. I want sympathy. I want to stop feeling like absolute rubbish. I want off this train. Now. I relay my ordeal and Sheila is a mixture of shocked, compassionate and amused all at once.
It’s bright outside now. While all this was happening the train has made its way dutifully ever-northward. Soon enough we’re slowing and my cabin-mate is leaving a few stops before us. He swings down to the floor and drags himself along the corridor as I carry his bags behind him. Reaching the carriage’s exit point, he waits for his wheelchair which arrives a few minutes later. I don’t know if he wants me to stay and help him on to the wheelchair but, considering he’s just literally crawled his way off the train, and the fact that there are train personnel at hand with the chair, I wish him good luck with his business up north and return to my cabin.
Sheila hasn’t had a too pleasant a night either, though her demons were more in the form of incessantly chatty older women who can’t take a hint while you’re trying to keep to yourself. Perhaps some old people keep talking for fear of spontaneously dying if they ever stop; their words a tangible connection to the mortal realm, the reaper patiently waiting close by for them to take a breath, be silent, and then never speak again.
We’re tired and I rest on the seat while Sheila reads, the train seemingly content to ramble the final few miles to Marlborough – our final destination – at a crawl.
“This cabin still smells of shit,” Sheila says as I try unsuccessfully to block out the memory.
“Tell me about it.”
Tags: Trip
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