Jim Haynes has always been interested in Australia’s railways – and admits he’s sentimental for a time when long train journeys across the continent brought plenty of opportunities for adventure.
The author and radio host has written and compiled many stories, songs and poems featuring trains over the years, and shared a few lines from a favourite old poem of his that sums up his feelings of nostalgia.
Perhaps I’m sentimental, but in my mind I seem to remember childhood journeys through a veil of smoke and steam.
How lucky we were to be alive when a train trip meant a ride behind an engine like a living thing, with its insides all outside.
You don’t meet many people in a car or bus or plane, but there was many a friendship made to the rhythm of a train.
If you dream of steam, card games and conversation, well perhaps you’re sentimental too. I’ll see you at the station!
Haynes’ latest book, Great Australian Odysseys, compiles tales of the extraordinary journeys that have shaped Australia’s history – from the bravery of sailors to the resilience of the truckies crossing the Nullarbor, and from the great age of rail to the aviation pioneers who turned the skies into a new frontier.
The rail section of the book includes a story from legendary American author Mark Twain, who visited Australia in 1895 as part of a world lecture tour.
“Mark Twain and his wife invested in a new printing mechanism, and before they could get it off the ground, the Linotype printing press was invented – so they more or less went bankrupt,” said Haynes.
“Twain needed to make some dough, and as the most famous author in the world at the time, the best way for him to cash in on his fame was to do a world tour. It’s an amazing piece of history!”
Twain’s story, To Melbourne by Train, details his travels from Sydney to Melbourne – including his disdain at having to change trains at the border between Victoria and New South Wales.
“He sums the whole business of the colonies choosing different rail gauges as perhaps only Mark Twain could – describing it as a ‘paralysis of intellect’,” Haynes laughed.
“We’re still dealing with the repercussions of those early decisions around the railways made by the colonies today.”
Haynes said the idea for the book came from contemplating the tyranny of distance – not just across Australia, but between Australia and the rest of the world.
“Until World War 2 and commercial aviation, you really couldn’t get to Australia without taking a very long sea journey,” he said.
“Starting with the First Fleet and going right up to the post-war ‘populate or perish’ times, the people who came to Australia made incredible progress in developing the railways.
“We had people from Scotland, England and all around the world building railways here. The railways employed more people than any other industry in Australia for about six decades, and because a lot of those people were migrants, they were also building up Australian society.”
Haynes said that back in the 1980s and 1990s, he thought rail’s heyday was well and truly over.
“I was living in Inverell in New South Wales and they closed the railway there – the town was very sad to lose it,” he said. “I even wrote a song called Sleepers and Rails about the fact that the railways seemed to be disappearing, but I’m glad to have been proved wrong.
“We still don’t have trains coming to Inverell, but things have improved in other areas of regional New South Wales.
“I hope we’ll have another great golden age of rail in Australia – with high-speed trains allowing us to move between our cities with ease.”
