Go-Betweens: "Born to a Family" (2005)

This pop band's heyday was in the eighties. They broke up somewhere around 1989, but the two primary songwriters reformed under the Go-Betweens banner around 2000. This song is from Oceans Apart, the best album in the Go-Betweens' catalog, in my opinion.

"Born to a Family"





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Tuesday I got up at 6 a.m. to catch the 7:45 train to Melbourne.

On the train I sat next to some guy from Canada who is touring Australia's East Coast. He was lanky, had a mustache, and was a bit of a Chatty Cathy. At one point I joked that Canada was a subsidiary of the United States, which he didn't find too funny.

Oh, here's something I found hysterical. The Canadian was hitting on the girl next to him, Tiffany, who lives in Melbourne and had been in Sydney for a friend's wedding. (She was about six feet tall, when she smiled you saw her gums, she wore a cap [not baseball, jeff cap, is it?] and she had long fingers.) The Canadian said, "You have the best accent I've heard down here. It almost sounds like Paul McCartney." Then he babbled about Britney Spears. Man, I had to fight really hard not to guffaw. Here I thought I was the king of lame pick-up lines. This Canadian cat has me beat. (Tiffany did laugh. I got the impression she appreciated the attention but wasn't wooed.)

I ate tons of food on the train. I must've spent nearly $50 on the buffet car. No big deal. That's only about 33 U.S. dollars.

The train was supposed to pull into Melbourne at 7:15 p.m., but a few delays knocked that time back to 7:45. Not too bad. Twelve hours to travel a little under 1,000 miles. The trip didn't go through the outback, mostly through farm country. Saw several sheep farms.

I took a cab to the hotel and checked in. Very nice. It's four star but has this avant-garde thang going on.

Melbourne doesn't seem so upscale as Sydney. True to its reputation, it has an European vibe to it. Lots of trams (translation: trolleys) here. Think I'm gonna enjoy my five nights here.










I'm posting this pic for my nephews, Marty and Billy, since they love trains so much. This is the one I took after it pulled into the Melbourne station.