By Phil Jarratt
After writing last week’s column from a hotel room in Perth, I hit send and caught a cab to East Perth Railway Station where I boarded the mighty Indian Pacific to begin a three-and-a-half day journey across this great land.
There was much excitement as we were shown to our Gold Class compartments, then introduced ourselves in the plush leather environment of the Outback Explorer Lounge. We were mostly, ah, mature age tourists, couples from all over the world, about to cross one of the great railway adventures off the bucket list. A reporter on an assignment, I was the odd man out, a subject of considerable curiosity.
We sipped a mid-morning champagne as the giant wheels began to turn and the long platform began to slip into history. Then clunk! We stopped. I checked Google Maps. We had come 300 metres. If we weren’t at the back of the long train we would still be at the platform.
In the fullness of time a voice crackled out of the PA, explaining that there’d been a slight derailment. Nothing serious, but being a lazy Sunday morning, it might take a little while to get a crew to fix the problem. Never mind, enjoy your champagne and in a short while, lunch will be served. Three courses, paired with the best wine.
We drank, we ate, we swapped life stories, we listened to our troubadour, James, sing all the old favourites, we played trivia games, we ate and drank some more. Television news crews filmed us from behind fences, holding up signs with phone numbers scrawled on them, hoping for a scoop from within our luxurious confinement. The day trickled away and still we didn’t move.
The Indian Pacific finally lurched back into action in the middle of the night, 12 hours late, and our entire transcontinental journey became a Mussolini-inspired mission to catch up time, to get back on schedule. Australia went whizzing by my window, and apart from a half hour dusk stop at a ghost town on the Nullarbor, and an hour at the Adelaide Oval (fascinating), my feet never felt the harsh red earth.
Despite, or perhaps because of the difficulties, our journey had some marvelous moments, which I’ll save for another place. The staff was magnificent under pressure, the food and wine excellent. I put on three kilos in less than four days.
The witch hunt
Before I get onto the surfing news of the week, let me get this off my chest. As I walked into the Qantas Club at Sydney Airport the other day, the sad face of that great thespian Geoffrey Rush peered at me from the front page of the Daily Telegraph. “King Leer” was the too-clever headline, and the story briefly revealed that some one had sent a complaint to the Sydney Theatre Company about the actor’s unspecified but allegedly “inappropriate” behavior two years ago.
Rush’s lawyers responded that he knew nothing about a complaint and vigorously denied that there could have been cause for one. But compared to the impact of that sad front page, the response meant nothing. Geoffrey Rush had been hung out to dry by the salivating tabloid media. Whether anyone ever finds any substance to the anonymous allegations, the damage has been done, the smear potentially career-ending.
Meanwhile, across town at the other smear factory, the Fairfax Media was continuing its assault on the pathetic one-time gardening star Don Burke. Anyone who worked for the Nine Network in Sydney during the late ‘80s and ‘90s – and I was one – knew that Burke was a nasty, sleazy piece of work, to be avoided at all costs. It was no secret, it just wasn’t much of a story. And it still isn’t. For a while he was a cash cow at Nine, and his award-winning unpleasantness was tolerated. Now he’s just a horrible old man who deserves our pity, not our torment.
So far no evidence has been presented against Rush, and the many decades-old accounts of Burke’s infantile behavior confirm only that he was a dickhead. This isn’t news, it’s a witch hunt. And who will be next?
Go girls!
What a week it was for women’s surfing on both sides of the Pacific! First, it was great to see Hawaii’s Honolua Blomfield ride her Peter White-shaped Classic Malibu to her first adult world championship at the WSL Longboard Titles in Taiwan.
Honny has been coming to Noosa with her mum Lynn for many years, and has been a multiple champion in junior and open, amateur and pro divisions at the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing. I’ve watched her grow up as a person and as a surfer, and I was stoked to see her fully focused on what she does best – blitzing the best waves on offer all week at Jinzun Harbour. As long as she keeps that focus going, she has many world titles ahead of her.
The same might be said of Tyler Wright, who surfed brilliantly at Honolua Bay, Maui, to steal her second consecutive WSL world title away from Sally Fitzgibbons and Stephanie Gilmore. To take nothing away from Tyler, I was hoping Sally could keep the momentum going in Hawaii for her overdue first world title, but she’ll be back next year.
Not since Layne Beachley’s heyday has Australia so dominated women’s pro surfing, with Tyler, Steph and Sally taking out the top three positions.
