Text: DO NOT UNCOUPLE

DO NOT UNCOUPLE

One of the best out-the-window signs so far – blurring past yesterday on our way from Toowoomba to Chinchilla. We’re now on the move again, this time to Roma, after another rapturous welcome and farewell from Chinchilla.

This morning’s memorabilia: the way the shower flow varied, fell soft then strong on my shoulders, like an actual fall of rain in a slight breeze; Nick making me cry with laughter (again) relating the story of the women whose photo he took outside their motel room while they smoked and promised him film deals; the relief of not having to walk to the train station, as my mysterious shoulder pain has flared up again, bit nasty.

Yesterday’s highlights were innumerable – way up on the list was the emotional wrestling match that characterised the finding - and retaining - of a seat on yesterday’s very full train. A group of Steam Train Enthusiasts from a country that shall remain un-named made it fairly hazardous for us to sit together as a group. ‘We’re the Steam Train Enthusiasts Society and we’ve come all the way from <airhorn>.’ I am ashamed to admit that I eventually resorted to saying ‘I’m from <airhorn> too, you know,' though I stopped short of ‘So there.’

This moved them not. As Nick pointed out, there was some likelihood that they'd worked out their seating plan – according to the arc of the sun – long before they left home. It clearly included having a whole seat space for each of their capacious backpacks.

NOMTWCSTTTTTHATBOTTB.

The reading in Chinchilla was charming and hilarious. Nick told the one about the guy who peed on his (Nick's) shoes at the urinal. Kim and I expressed relief that’s not likely to happen to us. A family of opinionated magpies made the audio experience interesting for us and no doubt for the audience.

I have become, as one does when one travels, obsessed with my bags. This has extended to an unhealthy preoccupation with the bags of those around me. I think it began with Lady Hairnet – whose black carry-all was resplendent with white, printed-on luggage tags as decoration. The tags said ‘SYD’, ‘HBA’, OOL’ (where’s ‘OOL’?), ADL’, ‘PER’. It seemed to be mostly empty and fairly flimsy but with a seat of its own, and that impressive design, it punched way above it’s weight.

I wondered what she might have in there. Roast pork sandwiches with relish? A carrot? A thermos? Perhaps, like George Clooney in ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’, my new most favourite film, she’s simply carrying a supply of hairnets.

Myself, I have a modest sized kete – woven basket – which at a pinch carries my laptop, my journal, my lunch, my water bottle, a small writing pad, a spare pair of socks and my beautiful hardback Alice Munroe book. It weighs like anti-matter, but the handles are holding out.

My suitcase is a marvel of overpacking. My trips to Blackall and Longreach were fresh in my mind, and my woeful circulation somehow persuaded me to take way too many clothes. But unlike that previous trip, there is heating and carpet in our accommodation this time around. So when the sun sets and the temperature plummets, as it does out west in the winter, we are more than likely going to be somewhere fairly insulated. This means I’m carrying a suitcase that’s packed to the gunnels with thermals, hoodies, tights and windbreakers the majority of which will remain rolled up in the tight little shapes they were when I packed them last Sunday.

There’s also a few small cans of baked beans (to maximise morning relaxation and isolation time – I am an introvert, no apologies), a packet of BBQ flavoured rice crackers, some dried apricots. There’s a very handsome copy of Mark Doty’s latest book (bless you Kate Camp). There’s two scarves and a merino and possum fur hat (God Almighty what was I thinking). And there’s giveaways – Matariki (Maori New Year) Calendars, QPF 2006 CDs, a few of my albums and some copies of ‘Kaupapa’, a gorgeous anthology of NZ poets I helped to edit. And my deceptively heavy rubber yoga mat. And my wheatbag to help at night with my shoulder pain.

And my toilet bag. I won’t put you through that particular inventory.

Once one of my aunts mentioned in passing how much luggage my mother always takes with her everywhere. It’s true. When she last came to stay with us for the weekend her suitcase weighed 28kg. Our access is extraordinarily inaccessible as far as access goes but my partner Chris, bless her, managed to keep her face muscles fairly relaxed while she hauled the case up the 80 degree incline life-threatening steps to our front lawn, with our suddenly enthusiastic fat tomcat weaving between her legs. That’s true love.

My suitcase from New Zealand weighed 32kg. I try and justify this by reminding people (myself) that I was packing for three months for a writer, a teacher, a performer, an outback traveller, an audio producer and a yoga fanatic. And a guitarist (the guitar with it’s simulated-cement case weighs 9kg on it’s own).

My steam train suitcase is a smaller one than my NZ one, borrowed with gratitude from JB. It is so heavy and overstuffed it’s kind of embarrassing. With each stop at each platform my mortification deepens, watching the hardworking volunteer train staff - many of whom are a lot older than me - heft it from the train to the ground.

Though it’s on wheels, it’s cumbersome and treacherously wrist-turning if you don’t watch the terrain carefully. At Chinchilla Station, with the crowds of spectators and the flag-waving children and the brass band playing ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and the tables groaning with Q150 postcards and complementary programmes, it was a fair challenge dragging our luggage through the inches-deep sand and burrs. In general I try and make my case look lighter to drag than it is. It doesn’t work. I eye Nick’s taut little black wheelie number and Kate’s red round-cornered masterpiece – no bigger than a big-boned briefcase – with envy.

On the train my only slightly less cumbersome kete becomes the sun about which all of my activities orbit. What to take with me to the dining car, the toilet, the verandag? [sic] Money, book, writing journal, jacket? The same seems to go for other passengers – when they leave the train for a short platform break at Miles, each person chooses what to leave and what to take: the coat? The hat? the magazine? The relatives? Some braver souls leave canvas hold-alls, make-up and camera cases. This train feels so safe – how could anything so gauche as a petty theft happen on a vehicle that’s 120 years old? Surely no-one would hand-bag nap on a 1920s Pullman Sleeper?

Myself, I certainly DO NOT UNCOUPLE from my kete at any time. Kim, Nick and Kate are the same – our laptops are in those bags. Our laptops are like limbs, like organs. We’d no more dream of leaving them on a trainseat – even an antique leather one - than we would leave our livers, or a left foot.

Kim and her son have got their luggage-lugging down pat – whenever they transition, she says to him ‘Three things, remember, you need to take three things on and off the train with you.’ Namely his two bags and his latest computer game. ‘Count them,’ says Kim. And it seems to be working – nothing has been left or lost so far. I begin to wish Kim was my mother, too. She'd never show up with 28kg in tow.

A very tall and friendly young Chinchilla High School Student who was at our reading last night is travelling on the train today with some of his fellow students.

‘I remember four or five years ago,’ he says, ‘there was another steam train came through, when I was a bit littler. I hung my whole body practically out the window. When I got home I could hardly see from the coaldust!’

As Matt Condon pointed out, most dialogue uttered on a steam train deserves an exclamation mark - but his, I think, especially so.

Beth leaves us today – Beth Green, who is involved with the Children’s Book Council and a marvellous advocate for children’s literature and its distribution far and wide. I’ve really enjoyed spending time with her as part of the group. It’s amazing when you’ve known someone for a little while and they suddenly reveal they’re 20 years older than you’d thought. And that they have six children. And many other eye-watering achievements and life journeys under their belt. Meeting people is endlessly humbling. Travel well, Beth, back to your two new grandchildren.