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so this is what the end looks like

Image: so this is what the end looks like

from Nick Earls, 20.08.09

But it's now later than that.

It's after nine and the heat of the day is still trapped in my motel room, but not in my chips, which are turning in the microwave as I drink a glass of bore water and wander the carpark looking for a bar or two of phone reception. Okay, so the food options after 8pm in Charleville aren't numerous (count them: one, and that's a servo), but it would be completely unfair to end an entry on Charleville on some whiny note like that.

Because Charleville is home to perhaps the greatest cheeseball known, with the recipe embargoed until future release in a fundraising cook book to fix a church roof. Yes, we ate of said cheesball tonight, so there is no call to complain about the early finishes of the town chefs when the library can deliver a cuisine highlight. Five-star cheeseball plus bottled wine in both major colours and to suit a range of palates.

No wonder the locals, and a number of our fellow train passengers, and the west's famous Reading Bugs packed the place out for our event this evening.

We couldn't have asked for a better finish, and it started at the station on arrival. The pic doesn't show it, since it's just us corralling bags and awaiting further instructions from the boss, but metres down the platform a massive civic reception for the train was underway, and a few minutes after the pic the mayor stepped off the platform and took our suitcases to the library in his ute.

You know the rest: wine, cheeseball. For me lots of cheeseball, temporarily interrupted by the arrival of a roomful of people and some author chat. Great people too, and quite a few who remembered the 1990 writers' train. One even stopped me in the street later to thank me for what we'd done for the library after the flood that year - all book sales on train one had raised money to restock a school library, and plenty here today has been a reminder of why we were here last time, and what the place was going through. Glad to see it's not like that now, not that it hasn't had a flood or two in the meantime.

Back in our rooms, we've probably each gone into our own versions of the usual routine - shove food in, recharge phone, upload pics from camera, check email and put out any fires, blog. Ten years ago, only espionage or a high-level hit would see someone whipping out so many cables and so much gear on walking into a motel room. It's like Oceans 14, but we're all the gadget guys. Or like John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank.

When did it become normal? Assuming it is normal.

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