Tag: runaway

I still read about wanderlust though my nomadic days have dwindled.  Reading about the swish current Melbourne-Sydney train, the XPT, kindles a memory of The Spirit of Progress, the titan of the tracks from my boyhood.  When I first rode it at thirteen, paddocks of silvery grass shivered, wan morning light breaking over imagined desperadoes’ campfires, rural Victoria flying past like life, silent stations a blur.  Ticketless, wearing sad belligerence’s long overcoat, I rehearsed my tale.  This account was not for my furious parents’, but my schoolmates’ ears.  My burgeoning description of speeding back in custody for daring crime when skipping school, and the resulting vivid arse-whipping, having hitchhiked from big trouble, would consolidate my schoolyard status.