My travelling companion from Sydney to Brisbane, Ian, the retired school teacher
A few years ago, I escaped the Southern winter by booking myself on Queensland Rail's Sunlander Class to Cairns but before I could start my luxury train travel into endless summer, I had to get from Sydney to Brisbane on the not-quite-so-luxurious XPT.
As it was an overnight trip, I had booked myself a two-berth sleeper compartment which I had all to my self-indulgent self as the electric train silently slid out of Central Station.
However, a few stations up the line I was joined by Ian, a retired school teacher from St.Ives, who claimed the top bunk. A couple of expletives crossed my mind as I contemplated my loss of privacy, but by the time dinner was served we had solved most of the world's problems and offloaded onto each other all our regrets and missed opportunities, including the fact that I had spent a mere eight years inside a school and he a whole lifetime.
I then remembered a recently rediscovered and painstakingly restored Australian movie about a teacher who, having been assigned to a tiny school in a remote township in the Australian Outback, is desperate to return to Sydney for the Christmas holidays. Forced to stop off at a rough-and-tumble mining town called Bundanyabba (known colloquially as "The Yabba") en route to catching his flight home, he is drawn into the brawling, hard-drinking lifestyle of the town's residents.
I had watched this uncompromising and controversial vision of life in a hellish town in the Australian Outback some months earlier and asked if my travel companion, having been a school teacher himself, knew about it. He not only knew about it but had seen it way back in the early 1970s when it was first released. We kept discussing it as we lay in our bunks but neither of us could remember its name.
The clickety-clack of the rail tracks must've lulled me to sleep when I was shaken awake. Startled, I opened my eyes, only to see my travelling companion, the retired teacher, leaning over me.
"It must be past midnight", I remonstrated, "What is it?"
"I remembered its name", he burst out, excitedly, "'Wake in Fright'".
Wake in fright indeed!
P.S. There are many in this country (and elsewhere) for whom "Wake in Fright" is the greatest Australian movie ever made. Never mind that it was written by a Jamaican (Evan Jones), directed by a Canadian (Ted Kotcheff) and starred an Englishman (Gary Bond), the 1971 film captured a core rottenness in the Australian male psyche. It wasn't pretty, but it was powerful, recognisable and utterly compelling. And yet, great as the movie was, most Australians have never seen it. Thanks to YouTube, you now can by clicking here. This particular version is 'italiana completo' with Italian subtitles but, hey, 'free' is a powerful adjective in anybody's language (although it's not quite 'completo', so if you want to watch the ending, you just have to buy it on ebay as I did).
P.P.S. For an insightful commentary on the movie, click here.
P.P.P.S. For an interesting remake of the original movie into a TV mini series, click here.
