Sunburnt Speculations

A Josip Novakovich exercise in scene development. Task: Describe a train ride… Objective: To show the experience of travel.

Novakovich, Josip. Fiction Writer’s Workshop (p. 41). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Once a year, for few days in August, they’d open the Exhibition Line, and you could take the train right into the Show.

The Northern and Western lines had diesels and modern steel and glass open carriages that let you walk down the centre aisle – and even from one carriage to another. Not that there was much room for walking if you got on at Mora Street, because the carriages were already full.

So, you’d squeeze in, looking for standing space, grabbing onto the handrails – or the straps, if you were tall enough – pressed against your fellow passengers for support and taking in the carriage smell of Mum, Rexona, Shower-to-Shower, apple cleanser and livestock manure.

Urban trains didn’t run class-rated carriages. Inside it was all sorts – families with jumping jack kids, mums with babes and strollers, stern faced dads, love-eyed couples, Wild Ones, and disapproving dowagers sitting defensively with umbrellas ready to prod some young fella who should have given up his seat.

Over the clatter of the wheels and tunnel echoes, you’d catch bits of excited talk about what was in this year’s sample bags – what was good value, what wasn’t; what were the best rides – which ones were too expensive, which ones would have you throwing up; what time the sheepdog trials started; and whether the Tassie wood-choppers stood a chance this year.

Young blokes would boast about how they were going to have go in the boxing tent. One would demonstrate his “shape up” stance and elbow his neighbour in the ribs.

Then the train would round a curve, unsteady on its three-foot six gauge track and, if you were sharp, you could see the long carriage twisting. You’d sway rhythmically on the bend – some of the passengers exaggerating the motion pretending to be drunken sailors. They might have been for all you knew.

Getting closer you’d glimpse the “Great Ferris Wheel” and the “Wild Mouse” – the two tallest rides in Sideshow Alley. The buzz in your carriage would build.

The train would slow, and you’d pull up with a jerk, unable to stop yourself from toppling forward into your neighbour. But it was all good fun. Everybody took it in good humour.

Then the doors would hiss open with a sharp pshoo — as if to say, Glad to be rid of you. And it was like you’d already been on one of the sideshow rides.