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now i know i'm really home

Image: now i know i'm really home

from Nick Earls, 21.08.09

So here's what I see that tells me the trip is truly over. More unmade than an unmade bed, more unfinished business than I can handle - my workspace in familiar mid-tour disarray. If my mother ever finds this site, I know I'll be hearing from her.

I'm still swaying, and the cat's behavior tells me I still smell of a different, drier, dustier place. We could smell salt in the air when we got off the plane, and mangroves and water.

So, some highlights ... I can't say how I'll feel months or years from now, but right now I can say a tour highlights packages would include:
• meeting Carmel T in Roma again, after first being won by her in a raffle on Writers' Train One, back when we were both rather less worldly
• also catching up with Marg Tiller of Chapters of Roma, and seeing that she's only moving on because her life says she's ready to, and that she's selling the only book shop between Toowoomba and Alice Springs as a thriving going concern (I was there for the opening, six years ago)
• night running around Chinchilla, the stars and the powerful sense of dark and stillness as lives closed down for the day, dogs barking at shadows off in the distance
• the grand finale at the Charleville Library, notable for the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, the commitment of the staff and of course the catering (cheeseball worthy of special mention)
• a certain conversation with three ladies a couple of drinks into their evening, around a plastic table outside a Chinchilla motel room
• the train, for all its soot and creaking and swaying and its honest toil pulling us up inclines (not always on the first attempt) and proving it was the real deal
• our little team. I couldn't have hoped for better company. Kim and Kate, who I know back in real non-train life, but too sporadically. I'm glad we got to talk more than usual. Hinemoana who took the bee-sting in her stride and was intrigued by the Australian regard for heroic failure. We're lucky to have her as our poet-in-residence, and not just for her poetry but for her spirit too. Beth who left us in Roma, but loyally stayed around to watch the entire show again first (third night in a row). And of course Luka, for the brilliance of his insights, the way he wears his heart on his sleeve, and for doing his absolute best to cope with a schedule that would run any almost-seven-year-old into the ground. We wouldn't have been the same team without him.

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