In A Train Carriage, Going Nowhere

"Spring is spontaneity. Spring is emergence, things popping up. Spring is dreams you an ease into life. It’s strangers, or cobbers who pop up happily when you least expect them. Nights at the pub that turn into mornings elsewhere. Road trips to nowhere. And conversations that could go anywhere." On the long journey to nowhere, I look out the windows of my train carriage and see that the seasons ha...

"Yet as the wings opened, I found something I had not expected. And a strong feeling came over me, one which I have experienced before, a premonition that I had stumbled upon something significant, that my life had reached a kink in the track and that I would not be the same from here on out." Sometimes I just feel like telling stories about the birds I see and the way they affect my imagination.

"I dreamed that I packed up my car for a short drive and never stopped. I dreamed of a life that was spontaneous and solitary, where I needed nothing more a pair of sandals and a canvas tent, a life lived on the banks of lakes or the shores of beaches, cooking up my evening grub in the bachelor’s pot of my trangia stove." I have been quite contemplative in my train carriage shack of late -- living...

"But sleep is a miracle, which, like swimming or eating pears or falling in love, is no less wondrous for the fact that it’s common." I live in a train carriage in the bush in Tasmania. In these winter months I sleep, I dream, and I tell stories.

"So that’s me, she said, a yabby going back into the bog, returning to the unknown, clad in a colourless cloak, armoured with a flimsy grey carapace. Churning up the past. Re-evaluating history. Not letting it rest." While I sit in this train carriage going nowhere, various animals come visiting me. Their stories weave with my story and help me understand myself a little more.

"It is a strange thing to hike upstream, against the current, contrary to gravity, to a high point, a crest of rock from which all waters must recede." I have been living in relative solitude in a train carriage in Tasmania. Here are some stories about finding connections in memory, in the bush, and across vast distances.

"She had worn a ring of turquoise. Its stone had innumerable cracks in it and to me, it looked like a globe that mapped out the continents of another planet. A cusp of sun appeared at the aft of the ship. She woke suddenly. 'Then where are you going?' she asked." This story is the result of a series of several travels to Istanbul. It explores the history and landscape and language of the city, thr...

"I miss the long journey, the impulse decision, the invented objective, the stranger in the corner, the road I’ve never been down, the plaque I haven’t read." I'm a Tasmanian storyteller living in a train carriage -- a motionless locomotive, on a journey nowhere.

"She left a gaping hole in our tapestry; so many threads ran through her life in order to connect with others and now those connections were sundered, her death leaving a lot of frayed and tattered fabric, loose ends." I live in a train carriage in Tasmania. Here are the stories I tell myself these days.

"For me, in this state of isolation and distance, holding on to some things has some value. Not cutting myself completely adrift, even as I decide not to read the news so much, even if I might go a couple of days without seeing anyone. I’m choosing to cultivate the tendrils that tether me to this colourful Earth." I live alone in an old train carriage that has been converted into a shack. Here, in...

“These moments by the river. The branches shimmering in the wind. Ducks navigating downstream towards the sea. Even if I might speak of it all prematurely in the past tense – I was lucky now.” I am a live in a train carriage in the bush, watching the seasons change. These are the stories I want to share from my solitude.

"The roads we turn away from we probably won’t encounter again. There are ways we remember from a while ago – usually they’ve vanished without a trace, become overgrown routes, or barred with boom gates." I live in an old train carriage in Tasmania. It goes nowhere but I take many journeys nevertheless.

"The rug's been pulled out from beneath all of us...discovering new ways of doing things. Going from day to day. Unable to resort to our habits. Working with fewer resources. Downsizing, and plumbing the depths of ourselves." My name is Bert. I am a storyteller who live in a train carriage in the bush.