Jember.
Oh, Jember my Darling.
South of it, were the cannibal blackfellas.
North, the Industrious chinks.
'Now the secret is to run over the bridge before the train comes.'
Max was listening carefully. He'd want to be.
The bridges were made of wood.
Below us, a drop of two hundred feet.
I could hear the whistle of a train.
Could the driver see us two larrikins walking over a dilapidated bridge?
I knew I couldn't hang off the bridge if train barreled down on us like a fucking freight train.
I was just too fucking heavy for that kinda heroic shit.
The trains didn't muck around in Java.
The Dutch built the bridges and the railway lines over a century ago and the Javanese reasoning was that if the 'white's built it then, it still should function very well without any maintenance.
The green of the forest threatened to envelop us. The blue sky above lulled us.
And the train was coming down hard on us.
A sleeper broke under my foot and lazily dropped into the torrent of a river below.
Two seconds, I said to Max, that's all we fucking have.
He was a meter ahead of me and just jumped off the railway line into the sloping bank of the river. .
I followed.
It was a shallow fall broken by lush grass and water.
And the train whizzed by, blowing its fucking whistle.
Trainspotting, now that's how it's fucking done, I said.
'Now let's get back to Jember and sniff out some skank,' I added.
I could tell Max was shaken up but full of life juices.
Racing against trains tended to put things in perspective pretty well fast.
Oh, Jember my Darling.
South of it, were the cannibal blackfellas.
North, the Industrious chinks.
'Now the secret is to run over the bridge before the train comes.'
Max was listening carefully. He'd want to be.
The bridges were made of wood.
Below us, a drop of two hundred feet.
I could hear the whistle of a train.
Could the driver see us two larrikins walking over a dilapidated bridge?
I knew I couldn't hang off the bridge if train barreled down on us like a fucking freight train.
I was just too fucking heavy for that kinda heroic shit.
The trains didn't muck around in Java.
The Dutch built the bridges and the railway lines over a century ago and the Javanese reasoning was that if the 'white's built it then, it still should function very well without any maintenance.
The green of the forest threatened to envelop us. The blue sky above lulled us.
And the train was coming down hard on us.
A sleeper broke under my foot and lazily dropped into the torrent of a river below.
Two seconds, I said to Max, that's all we fucking have.
He was a meter ahead of me and just jumped off the railway line into the sloping bank of the river. .
I followed.
It was a shallow fall broken by lush grass and water.
And the train whizzed by, blowing its fucking whistle.
Trainspotting, now that's how it's fucking done, I said.
'Now let's get back to Jember and sniff out some skank,' I added.
I could tell Max was shaken up but full of life juices.
Racing against trains tended to put things in perspective pretty well fast.
