Tea and Sugar Train - American Story with Bob Dotson

12/26/1986, Aboard the Tea and Sugar Train, Nullarbor Plain, Australia - BEFORE MY LONG RUN TELLING THE AMERICAN STORY I REPORTED AN AUSTRALIAN TALE ABOUT A RAILROAD WHICH HOLDS THE WORLD RECORD FOR THE LONGEST STRETCH OF TRACK WITH OUT A TURN — 299 MILES ACROSS THE NULLARBOR PLAIN. ON MY 40TH BIRTHDAY NBC NIGHTLY NEWS SENT ME TO REPORT ON A TRAIN THAT AUSTRALIANS AFFECTIONALLY CALLED, THE “TEA AND SUGAR.” IT WAS A MOVING SHOPPING CENTER WHICH BROUGHT SUPPLIES TO THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN REMOTE PLACES. THE “TEA AND SUGER” TRAIN MADE ITS LAST RUN MORE THAN A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO. FORTUNATELY, I KEPT A DIARY:

“There’s a bank car, theater car, grocery store car, a car filled with doctor’s offices, one that has a chapel. Sixty train cars. A mile long. Most do not have a passage way between them, so people who work in one seldom see those who work in another. The “Tea and Sugar” meanders more than a thousand miles across South Australia, stopping whenever someone waves it down. It’s arrival in remote places is the social event of the week. All the families linger for hours buying impulsively, trying to extend the moment when they are where the lights are bright and there is laughter and community.

Ziggy Wieczorek came to get his pay. The train carries $50,000 in cash. No guards.
“If a bloke stole this he’d have to fly it out with a helicopter,” says the paymaster. “That would cost him a bunch, because we’re in the middle of nowhere. He’d run out of aviation fuel.”
The paymaster says the “Tea and Sugar” has never been held up.

Ziggy’s 7 dogs scurry around him when he comes to the grocery car pushing a little green wheel barrow. He fills it with his standing order of beef and lamb and beer. He waves away the flies climbing over the grey stubble of his beard which blends into the tufts of his chest hair. Ziggy smiles at me. His teeth are worn thin at an odd angle — higher in back than in front — and pitched like a wine rack. He doffs his pork pie hat when six Aborigines enter. They are served separately and last. The men wear stocking caps and trousers caked with red mud. The women and children are barefoot, but have sweaters and coats. One woman has a piece of yellow string in her hair. It is the only adornment that any of them sport. They buy a can opener with bright red handles, Yo-Yo cookies, pickles and orange drink. The whole time they speak not a word of English. As the Tea and Sugar whistles goodbye, they walk away into the desert. The train’s tail light shines a red path for them upon the red earth.

Bob Dotson is the author of four books, including the New York Times best-selling “American Story: A Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things.” (Penguin/Random House)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

The latest edition of his classic, “Make It Memorable: Writing and Packaging Visual News with Style” became Amazon’s best-selling journalism book. It is being studied on 26 campuses and in newsrooms around the world. (Roman & Littlefield.)

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Memorable...

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