PLATFORM AND A HALF
- The World’s Largest Underground Conspiracy
PROLOGUE
Beneath our roads and skyscrapers, under our houses and parks, lies a secret to which the answer has not been know – until now. IN the next pages, many truths will be uncovered about the seemingly harmless lives that we have until now believed that we have been living. Why was your train late last Thursday? What is it that gives the peculiar Asian lady at the chicken shop her major mood swings? Why is there no under 18 concerts in Sydney planned for Pete Murray’s Australian tour? Why do tall people think that they are so good? Why do some Powerade bottles come without a pop-up lid? Why do some netball teams always seem to get atrocious umpires? Why on Earth does everything seem to go wrong for two young Sydney girls who just want to get on with life? Well, we have discovered the answer to all of these problems.
It all started in 1854 with the opening of the Sydney train line. At this time, the train line only spanned a few kilometres but it was easy to see, within the first few years of its opening, that it was going to become evil. The black soot that poured from the few trains that travelled this line each day, conjured a spell that would not take effect until one hundred and fifty years into the future. This spell ahs destroyed the lives of two young girls. We are those girls and we are writing this book to warn everyone of the possible circumstances that can occur without reason.
This is your warning.
CHAPTER 1
“Before We Knew”
Growing up was fun. Being a kid, you could wear a pink and green polka dotted dress and believe with all of your heart that you looked amazing. You could prance around in a fairy dress and tiara, even if you were at the local shopping centre. We had no burdens holding us down. Life was ours and we played it our way. Life consisted of dress-ups, sandpits, Play School, monkey bars, ice cream, the Wiggles video that you watched seven times a day without fail, Play-doh, chicken flavoured Two Minute Noodles, grapes, mangoes, little pikelets drowned in strawberry jam, teddy bears and of course the Disney Channel. This is what our lives revolved around. We were at the centre of not only our own lives but the lives of whoever else was around us at any point in time. That was our job.
When you are five you take your first big leap. You leave the boundaries of your home and venture away to an unknown place with unknown people. You get your first taste of the real world. Although starting school puts you into a new position with new opportunities , your five year old ignorance usually gets the better of you. You go through your first three years of school still without a care in the world. Then it all starts to buckle. At around the ages of eight and nine, life’s small complications soon become realised. Easting food off the ground soon becomes seen as ‘totally gross’, cooties become a real hazard on the playground, friendship groups show the first signs of emergence, leading to the first whispers of playground bullying, parents become really dorky, a packed lunch is nowhere near as cool as canteen food, sport starts to become a major part of your life, knowing the words to every song on the radio is an absolute must and school starts to become a little bit more important that you had once thought.
It is in the immediate years following this that life’s big questions are pondered. Hwy do I still have a bedtime? Will I really like a boy, ever? Where did I come from? Why am I here? What does life have in store for me? How long will I be here for? I wonder if Mum will buy me an ice cream on the way home? These are the first signs of a will to know. We showed these signs early and we discovered enormous amounts on our journey to know.
When we reached high school, life really started to get difficult. We had to meet new people and go new places. School was totally different to what we were used to and everyone became more serious, about everything. Some things started to go wrong, Friends became depressed and in some instances did their best at trying to rid everyone of a burden. Some people stopped eating properly and gained terrible eating disorders. We always did our best to help these people but unfortunately sometimes it just became to serious and was totally out of our hands. This is when we had to be the support systems and be ready for anything. This became hard and sometimes it got to us a little too much. At some times we felt as though our worlds were crashing down around us and we were being punished for something that we had done. We really started to wonder why we seemed to be the only people suffering in this way. We took these beatings for almost a year before we realised the truth.
It had been so simple all along and yet to had taken us
fourteen years to uncover the secret. When we finally worked it out, we could
not believe that the answer had been under our noses the entire time and yet we
had failed to see it. The answer lay in a mode of transport, a concert ticket
and a bunch of really odd people.
CHAPTER 2
“Uncovering the Truth”
It was a freezing winter morning, around seven–twentyish and I stood on platform three of Town Hall Railway Station. It was a fairly quiet morning and I stood up against the wall listening to my music, minding my own business, when my attention turned to a Tangara slowly approaching the adjacent platform. It glided to a stop and after a slight pause the doors flew open. People poured from the carriages, pushing and bustling to get to the stairs. I saw a woman get pushed up against the wall in another travellers flurry. The people just kept flooding out of the carriages. I don’t believe that I have ever seen so many self centred beings act in this way ever before in my life. There was no sense of humanity in this situation and I just stood and stared. The suits and briefcases pushed and shoved and it became clear that it was every man for himself. The elderly were knocked, the young was trampled, the women became overpowered and the men became angry. It was a lose-lose situation for everybody involved. That is, everybody except one smirking railway controller. He stood almost in the centre of the platform and blew his loud, piercing whistle. I swear that thing was designed to shatter windows. No one took much notice of him so he brought the cold whistle to his lips for a second time. The piercing sound was nowhere near any better the second time and I could still see people barging through the crowd and up the stairs. Finally, the railway controller brought his blew flag up as if to say “get off or get on”. He let out one final screech of his whistle and the doors harshly slammed closed. The train slowly started rolling forward and disappeared into the tunnel. I was still standing up against the wall, now staring down into the tunnel where the metal giant had disappeared, when the railway controller turned, lifted his head in my direction, raised his eyebrow then screwed up his face as though trying to focus on me. He looked me up, then down then looked back at my face, He smiled, not a friendly, comforting smile but a knowing smile, like he had just figured out something by looking at me. He scared me so I turned away from him. I kept my eyes down and dared not look up. I could still feel him looking at me. I could feel that knowing smirk. I turned my music up louder and tried not to think about the controller.
It was almost three minutes after this that my train slowly approached platform number three. By this time a fairly large crowd had appeared and was ready to board. The train slowly came to a stop and the doors flew open. I braced myself for what was about to happen. Once again the passengers spewed out onto the platform, barging through anyone or anything to be the first to the top of the stairs. I kept back and tried my hardest not to be trampled. I received a bit of a knock from an elbow, I think it was, other than that I was relatively unscarred. As the last of the crowd was spilling onto the platform, the first cold, sharp whistle sounded. I turned to my right and peered down the platform. There was still lots of people bustling towards the entrances of the carriages and I slowly focused my attention on the source of that hair-raising whistle. Almost halfway down the platform, maybe a little closer to my end, was the railway controller. He was looking directly at me, and I was frozen in my tracks. It couldn’t be -. It was! He smirked that same smirk-styled smile, that knowing smile. It was at this exact point in time that I realised that something weird was happening. The railway controller that disappeared and reappeared was no ordinary Town Hall Railway controller. I was still staring at him and he was still smiling at me. Once again he raised his whistle to his lips and let out a long, high-pitched blast. I finally regained consciousness and slowly stepped onto the train. By this time there was no one left on the platform. Everyone had either forced their way up the stairs or boarded the now relatively empty train, the doors slammed shut and the train slowly rolled into action. I dropped my bag between my feet, leant up against the pole and stared out of the window of the carriage. I kept on my lookout for the controller as the train rattled through the station. We slowly began to pick up speed and I stepped forward towards the windows. We travelled the entire length of the platform, - he was gone. It was impossible. There is no way that he could have disappeared in such a short period of time. But he was gone, no sign of him whatsoever.
I turned around and pressed my back up against the glass. I didn’t understand. I must have imagined it, I thought to myself. But I knew that I hadn’t. Everything that had just happened was real, I know it was.
to be continued...
100 things to do before you die. . .
How many have you achieved?
Click on the boxes and find out how you're doing.
- Attend at least one major sporting event: the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the U.S. Open.
- Throw a huge party and invite every one of your friends.
- Swim with a dolphin.
- Skydive.
- Have your portrait painted.
- Learn to speak a foreign language and make sure you use it.
- Go skinny-dipping at midnight in the South of France.
- Watch the launch of the space shuttle.
- Spend a whole day eating junk food without feeling guilty.
- Be an extra in a film.
- Tell someone the story of your life, sparing no details.
- Make love on a forest floor. (remember to take a blanket)
- Make love on a train. (after it has been cleaned)
- Learn to rollerblade.
- Own a room with a view.
- Brew your own beer.
- Learn how to take a compliment.
- Buy a round-the-world air ticket and a rucksack, and run away.
- Grow a beard and leave it for at least a month.
- Give your mother a dozen red roses and tell her you love her.
- Be a member of the audience in a TV show.
- Put your name down to be a passenger on the first tourist shuttle to the moon.
- Send a message in a bottle.
- Ride a camel into the desert.
- Get to know your neighbors.
- Plant a tree.
- Learn not to say yes when you really mean no.
- Write a fan letter to your all-time favorite hero or heroine.
- Visit the Senate and the House of Representatives to see how Congress really works.
- Learn to ballroom dance properly.
- Eat jellied eels from a stall in London.
- Be the boss.
- Fall deeply in love -- helplessly and unconditionally.
- Ride the Trans-Siberian Express across Asia.
- Sit on a jury.
- Write the novel you know you have inside you.
- Go to Walden Pond and read Thoreau while drifting in a canoe.
- Stay out all night dancing and go to work the next day without having gone home (just once).
- Drink beer at Oktoberfest in Munich.
- Be someone's mentor.
- Shower in a waterfall.
- Ask for a raise.
- Learn to play a musical instrument with some degree of skill.
- Teach someone illiterate to read.
- Blow all your savings and take a flight on the Concorde.
- Spend a night in a haunted house -- by yourself.
- Write down your personal mission statement, follow it, and revise it from time to time.
- See a lunar eclipse.
- Spend New Year's in an exotic location.
- Get passionate about a cause and spend time helping it, instead of just thinking about it.
- Experience weightlessness.
- Sing a great song in front of an audience.
- Ask someone you've only just met to go on a date.
- Drive across America from coast to coast.
- Make a complete and utter fool of yourself.
- Own one very expensive but absolutely wonderful business suit.
- Write your will.
- Sleep under the stars.
- Take a ride on the highest roller coaster in the country.
- Learn how to complain effectively -- and do it!
- Go wild in Rio during Carnival.
- Spend a whole day reading a great novel.
- Forgive your parents.
- Learn to juggle with three balls.
- Drive the Autobahn.
- Find a job you love.
- Spend Christmas on the beach drinking pina coladas.
- Overcome your fear of failure.
- Raft through the Grand Canyon.
- Donate money and put your name on something: a college scholarship, a bench in the park.
- Buy your own house and then spend time making it into exactly what you want.
- Grow a garden.
- Spend three months getting your body into optimum shape.
- Drive a convertible with the top down and music blaring.
- Accept yourself for who you are.
- Learn to use a microphone and give a speech in public.
- Scuba dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
- Go up in a hot-air balloon.
- Attend one really huge rock concert.
- Kiss someone you've just met on a blind date.
- Be able to handle: your tax forms, Jehovah's Witnesses, your banker, telephone solicitors.
- Give to a charity -- anonymously.
- Lose more money than you can afford at roulette in Vegas.
- Let someone feed you peeled, seedless grapes.
- Kiss the Blarney stone and develop the gift of gab.
- Fart in a crowded space.
- Make love on the kitchen floor. (not in a restaurant...definately not in a restaurant)
- Go deep sea fishing and eat your catch.
- Create your own web site.
- Visit the Holy Land.
- Make yourself spend a half-day at a concentration camp and swear never to forget.
- Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
- Create your Family Tree.
- Catch a ball in the stands of a major league baseball stadium.
- Make a hole-in-one.
- Ski a double-black diamond run.
- Learn to bartend.
- Run a marathon.
- Look into your child's eyes, see yourself, and smile.
- Reflect on your greatest weakness, and realize how it is your greatest strength.
