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BRISBANE TO BARCALDINE, Queensland, Australia - It isn't the Wabash Cannonball, the Orient Express, or the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but the Spirit of the Outback makes tracks just fine across the vastness of northeast Australia. Most trains go somewhere. The Spirit goes to nowhere, twice a week from Brisbane, and it takes 24 hours to get there.
This is written with an apology - though probably not necessary - to the Nowhereians, those good, solid and unbelievably hospitable folk of Queensland's "never-never land," the outbackers whose dry, remote domain gives new meaning to "boonies." They think little of driving 50 or 60 miles to the store (driving alertly to avoid kangaroos and emus), and don't wince at the only cliche you can think of: "God, this is the middle of nowhere."
To suggest that their place is no place may seem a little disparaging, but they understand, and love the 'hood nonetheless. The hard life on the stations (ranches) suits them. Agreeing that it's nowhere, they remain firm in cherishing it as somewhere sweet to them, uncluttered and untrammeled, offering its unique beauties.
Glistening Brisbane, the coastal urban jewel of Queensland, fades quickly in twilight as the Spirit departs Roma Street Station at 7 p.m. Paraphrasing the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" lyric - "Dinner in the diner,/Nothing could be finer/Than to have your ham and eggs/In Caroline'r" - how about:
"Dinner in the tucker car,/Chef Smy is the star/With crocodile de jour/In Caboolture"?
Tucker (Aussie for food) is much welcome in the diner called the Tucker Box. Although the car wobbles, Chef Mickey Smy says it's only a matter of time before you get used to cooking with jumpy pots and pans. Her tasty croc special, white and fishy, is served as Caboolture, a dairy town, appears and disappears. Our tablemate, an Irish immigrant called Dee, is on her way to Emerald for the birth of a grandchild.
Air-conditioned and largely composed of modern compartmentalized sleeping cars, with showers, this non-smoking train dosn't burn up the rails. A conductor explains that tremendous outback heat can cause tracks to buckle, so we take it easy. A pleasant, languorous pace is sometimes 15 miles per hour around sharp mountain curves. Anyway, who's in a hurry on the way to nowhere?
While reading in our comfortable five-by-seven cubicle, we are queried about bedtime by the conductor. Now's fine. A conjurer, he waves his hands, pulling and pushing handles and buttons. Presto! Upper and lower berth appear, along with a pull-down sink.
Would we like tea or coffee served at 6:30 a.m., he wonders. No thanks, athough it means missing a quick peek at Rockhampton, birthplace of the tennis wizard, Rod Laver. Friend Aurelio loses the coin toss, gets the upper, complete with ladder and safety/restraining strap. During the night we also miss Gympie, where the 1967 gold rush pepped up the Queensland economy. In Aborigine, "gympie" means "devil," an allusion to the area's stinging nettle trees.
A green cornfield graces the window as we awaken, nearing Blackwater, a coal mining center. A sign in the diner - "Footware to be worn at all times" - sends me back to the compartment for shoes. Of course, "cackle berries" (Outback for "eggs") are on the breakfast menu, along with those bush favorites: baked beans, spaghetti.
Black Downs, a series of mesas, spreads across the horizons. Beside the tracks are cattle amid their dear bottle trees. Plump and bulging, the trunks are mushy and can sustain the animals during a drought. Shortly, however, Blackwater's strip mines uglify the view for a while.
Emerald's old station is a 1900 gem in eggshell with brown trim and tin roof. Pillared and festooned with iron grillwork, it is guarded by royal palms, across the main street from the Bounce-In Cafe and the Raging Bull Bar.
Disembarking for a walk, we encounter the dining car women, Chef Smy and crew, taking a cigarette break. Aurelio feels compelled to give her "Old Demon Nicotine!" speech. "Because you're such nice young girls - don't do this to yourselves." They are amiable, conceding her argument. But swearing off doesn't seem imminent. Kitchen smoke is insufficient to their needs.
Cotton fields signal the approach to Anakie, where the fields are pricier, loaded with sapphires. In 1934, the planet's largest black sapphire, then valued at $ 200,000, was unearthed at Anakie, where, to the passerby, red dirt roads, forests of scrub and lonely cows seem the features. Underground it's a different story.
Terrain changes constantly. There is bleakness, but always broken by a stretch of low mountains such as 2,500-foot Mount Portwine, a valley, grasslands, a parched town like Bogantungan, where mobile homes on blocks are popular dwellings. At the edge of a mint green forest are barren acres of black trunks where a selective bush fire struck.
Presently - at last - a billabong (a bush pond, as in "Waltzing Matilda") graces the scene. Shaded by gum trees, surrounded by lazing cattle, it's crammed with enough lilly pads to have satisfied Monet, and is home to a duck.
The engine nearly bites the last car on the severe curves through the Drummond Range, but the train straightens out to enter Alpha, a pleasant-looking settlement of 700 whose outstanding attraction is the public dunny: a cinder block and concrete structure housing toilets. "Don't miss it," advises the conductor as we stop for 15 minutes. He's right.
A painter named Alice McLaughlin has spread a restful mural of pioneer life across the outhouse's outer wall, not what we usually think of as toilet art. Her several other murals further brighten the town.
"Alice has gone off to paint somewhere else," says the stationmaster, "but I reckon she left us with some masterpieces." Numerous popes have said the same about Michelangelo.
Plains surround the farming community of Jericho, where antique tractors are displayed near the station. A last jouncing, heeling, creaking mountain climb is a prelude to Barcaldine, known in Australian history for the rural strike in 1891 of sheep shearers seeking higher wages. Theirs is an important and physically demanding occupation in this territory. The strike, saluted and well-chronicled, at a fine local museum, the Heritage Center, was brutally put down by landowners, and the leaders imprisoned. But it was the genesis of the Australian labor movement.
Barcaldine. Time to get off the Spirit of the Outback for good. Leaving the air-cooled car, we are slapped in the face by a wilting 100-degree-plus afternoon. Meeting us, ranch wife Norma Fallon says, "Looks like you two need the real spirit of the Outback - a cold beer."
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