Slow Train to Never

Over 50 years ago, on 25 May 1961, President J F Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade.  On 20 July 1969, just 8 years later, that undertaking was completed.  From vision to accomplishment it was a breathtaking technical and logistical achievement.  Compare that to what passes for vision in this country.   

Today, it is being announced that we could build a high speed rail link between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  The timeframe?  That would be 9 years before we even can start building and a mind-numbing 40 years to complete the railway.  40 years!  It would be finished in 2053.  We will take more time to just get started than it took to complete the lunar mission.  I don't know why they didn't announce it on 1st April. 

How can we take almost half a century to build a railway?  Maybe you can't get iron, coal or steel in this country.  Maybe we only have horses and carts to transport the raw materials.  Perhaps it's the first fast train in the world ever to be made so we have no examples on which to base it.  Or are we building it out of moon-rock?   Sure it would be about 400 km longer than the Beijing-Shanghai line but then they didn't start building that in 1973.  In fact, construction commenced in 2008 and it opened in 2011.  The world's longest high-speed line built in 3 years.  3 years vs our 40 years.  I understand that it would cost us more but how can it also take us more than ten times longer to build it?  I despair of what that says about this country.  

We also all know that if we say it will take 40 years, it will take longer (and probably cost twice as much).  That's the Australian way.  Actually, the real Australian way is to just talk about it.  Forever.  It's like the second Sydney airport. That was being talked about even before my arrival in this country (in 1978).  Where are we now?  Oh, we're still talking about it.  After 40 years of talking, we still don't even know where to put it. 

In this country, everything is in the too-hard basket.  To see change talked about in your lifetime actually delivered, you need to live to about 150.  I would have loved to be able to hop on a fast train to Melbourne but, sadly, I now know that I will never do so.