The Transcontinental

There’s a train that leaves the city
With its passengers and freight,
Going on its eastward journey,
And it seldom travels late;
Thro’ the Darling Range it passes
Where the grades are long and steep
Where flood waters, down the gullies
Over stony ridges leap

2 more verses then:

There’s the ‘Continental’ waiting
Near the platform, long and broad,
Ready for the eastern journey,
Takes the travellers aboard,
Soon is heard the tat ta tat ta
As the iron wheels pass o’er
Gleaming metals that go stretching
On the plains of the Nullarbor

Speeding on to distant cities,
Across the hot dry desert sands
Where some lonely camel driver,
Greets the train with wave of hand,
And an Abo’ of the region
Gazes on with wond’ring eyes,
And a broad grin lights his face,
As the engine rumbles by.

And the mirage in the distance
Shows a lake-land faintly brood
And the Emu shyly wanders
In the haunting solitude.
Beyond spinifex to southward,
Distant Willies blow land bare
Like old Blacks at their boras
Spirits dwell forever there.

By a solitary station,
Where the bound’ry riders ride
From the dawn to silver twilight,
With their dreams unsatisfied
When they spy the railroad crossing
Gliding smoothly over the plain
Hope within them awakens,
And they dream of home again.

Speeding through the lonesome land
Out towards the border-line
By the fettlers’ lonely out-camp
And the Tarcoola’s failing mine
Onward to the stately cities,
With its passengers content,
Speeds the great ‘Transcontinental’
Out across the continent.

Notes

By S.J. Wade, 1936 from The Railway and Tramway Magazine. Perth W.A. Railway Institute