2011 - Theses - Flinders University

een a journalist, collecting tales across the country to file with The Bulletin or The SunSunday Guardian back in Sydney.Pen poised, he writes ‘I am a messenger’, but pauses. No, more than that, and he scratchesthe words out in haste to capture the image that has leapt to him mind. Sweating back andmuscled arms holding two train carriages together as if by sheer will, with one trailer rollinglike a small mountain towards the man in the middle. At the right moment, with a thud andgrating the shunter would flip the hook of one carriage into the notch of the other and flip!again another loop of metal smartly across to hold the arrangement fast before the crushingweight pinned him between them. The final casual snick of the blunt pin through the metaljoint, coupling the carriages together for the long haul. ‘Coupling,’ that was the word hewanted. That’s what he was up to. Forcing a vast continent of need to be hooked securely intothe lives of those who could care. And he, with his pen, was the man standing ready to linkthem, before they collided, or rolled away from each other forever. ‘Coupling’: he likes that.He writes quickly, evading the next memory that wants to come, of a man caught betweentwo carriages that had rolled too fast for him to slam the hook down before the buffersscreeched with the impact. The shrieking metal seemed to go on eternally, like two continentsgrinding against each other, until they fell apart and the shuddering subsided and men ranfrom everywhere to the space between the stock to see what had happened. No: Jim sends thememory away. Flip, flip and through, he repeats. Neat and strong and safe. In the adrenalin ofinspiration, his missive steams its way across the page, the first of what will become a regularprocession of need after need threading its way from the remotest corners of the continent tothe depot of Christian hearts.75