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Spent Force
Something quite odd happened today. During evening rush hour, our train stopped at Claisebrook station, two stops out of Perth Central, and remained put. Normally a one minute stop, it remained motionless as trains on other lines came and went while trains behind us on the same line banked up. Then, sometime later, came an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for this delay in service, but our driver has gone missing.”
Incredible, how can it be that at a suburban railway station a driver simply goes missing? There was no toilet for a driver to take an unscheduled but perhaps desperately needed pit stop, there was no sign of a railway driver high-tailing out of the station and, unlike the London Underground, there was no announcement that a passenger had gone under a train and the driver in was immobilized by shock. This was simply a case of one train, no driver.
There was one more apology, we were informed that a relief driver was on the way and some fifteen minutes later, the doors closed and we were off. We presumed it was the relief driver, but if it was just a helpful passenger we were none the wiser.
It may be an easy thing to become obsessed or preoccupied with weather, especially when the mercury tops 39 degrees centigrade on the first day of autumn. We are apparently experiencing a heat wave which is defined in meteorological terms as ten days in a row where the temperature reaches more than 35 degrees. We have had, according to the television news, two of these heat waves in what has become the hottest and driest summer recorded in the 110 year history of recordings in Western Australia.
This may be the only place in the world where, when the forecasters predict improving weather, they actually mean it is going to get cooler.
If ten days of 35 degree-plus temperatures constitute a heat wave, spare a thought for the residents of Paraburdoo in the northern Pilbura region of the state. There it has been over 40 degrees every day for forty days straight, so hot that the town’s liquor store is reported to be almost out of booze. Wines, spirits and pre-mixes have all run dry, but there is still some beer because they buy in bulk. Bulk must be quite a large order.
Perth Now reports that Paraburdoo Burger Bus owner Sonia Peters shut her mobile burger van one day because the heat topped 50 degrees inside the vehicle. “Luckily I’m Asian so I don’t sweat,” the extraordinarily fortunate Ms Peters told the paper.
While the weather may be hot, the same cannot be said for the Western Force, the local Super 14 rugby team, who were uncharitably described in the local newspaper as the Spent Force. It may be coincidence but a recent email from an acquaintance, no less than a board member of the Canterbury Rugby Football Union, suggested that, with his coaching experience with the Sydenham Rugby Club in Christchurch, Marty might be just the man to help this team out of the doldrums. There may have been something in that, or alternatively it may be a clue as to just how desperate the team is, that a local competition is running, the first prize to be John Mitchell’s assistant coach for a day. The consolation prize is quite possibly to be the assistant coach for the entire season.