The rain lifted as we passed what may have been Yongala (the town that gave its name to the steamer wrecked off the North Queensland coast) and Jamestown, birthplace of R. M. Williams, Sir Raphael Cilento and actor Paul Cronin.
Those two locations listed on the timetable but I assume the relevant stations were on the other side of the train. There was no other way of telling unless you managed to catch a glimpse of a place name on a pub, store or some other business that might choose to be place specific in its nomenclature. A glance in the Platform magazine suggested we weren't that far north of Clare.
An unexplained pause (usually we got an announcement and a potted history over the PA if we were stopping to let somebody on or off) wasn't all that long, but suggested that, within the basic limits it operates under, the timetable is relatively flexible, so from time to time if the train's running ahead of time it stops to let the timetable catch up.
I'd started on the trip under the belief that this was an express coast to coast enterprise, and once you were on you were on for the duration, but it was becoming increasingly obvious there weren't too many passenger services operating along the route, so there was an element of the milk run coming into things.
Under those circumstances (I'm guessing here and am therefore open to correction) a particular run might have no one to collect or deposit en route, while another might have a dozen. With a certain amount of time being lost at every pick up or set down, you're probably fine if the train's running late. On the other hand, if the train's running early, someone might miss it, so from time to time when they're running ahead of schedule they stop to allow the schedule to catch up, and I guessed that happened when they knew there was a pickup somewhere shortly down the line.
At least that's the conclusion I came to as I sat pondering why the heck we were stopping here.
After Gladstone the weather seemed to be lifting and there was a vista of green rolling hills across to the Clare-wards horizon and fields beside the track planted with peas or some other green manure type crop but was more than likely something else entirely.
Crop identification from a moving train isn't Hughesy's strong point.
Just before we were called for lunch we passed Snowtown of massacre fame, and the mention of the name brought a raised eyebrow from 'Er Busily Adding Photos To The Laptop (I was scribbling in the notebook). A long, relaxed and leisurely lunch (there are definite advantages in being in the second sitting) took us onto the Adelaide Plains with sightings of grape ins as the urban sprawl became increasingly obvious.
Back in the cabin to prepare for the three-hour spell in Adelaide we watched as the CBD high rise hove into view and I scanned the horizon for familiar structures as the train rolled into what was obviously the terminal with an increasing sense of unease, since Madam had lined up appointments with a couple of acquaintances from Adelaide days, and the first rendezvous point was at the station close to the CBD, which meant I should have been sighting the light towers from the Adelaide Oval over there, and I should be glimpsing the banks of the Torrens between them and the train.
Alighting, we discovered Adelaide's Parklands Terminal and Central Station are two different, discrete and completely unrelated kettles of fish. A $12 taxi fare took us to where we needed to be for the first rendezvous, and from there we set out in search of somewhere to sit and talk, something that wasn't 100% easy to find unless you were willing to shell out for something to eat and/or drink, something you're not likely to be over-enthusiastic shortly after a very good lunch and a late breakfast.
Madam managed a fruit juice and her friend something more substantial, but I was full up to the muzzle, and sat deleting some of the accumulated email and passing the occasional comment about the train trip, though there was no guarantee that any of my remarks actually coincided with the actual contents of the Japanese conversation.
As we headed for the second appointment, Madam's friend seemed nonplussed when I revealed that my grasp of the language comprises the equivalents of Hello, Good-bye, Thank You and Cheers.