There is something special about your true-blue Aussie as there is with most of the mob you meet over here. They have this "she'll be right, no worries mate" attitude, with very little of the sobering staunchness we have creeping into our Kiwi korero.
Rarely will you find an Aussie who won't say g'day and, once you have crossed the bridge of belonging, them being of the green'n'gold jersey and you the all black one, they will yarn till the cows - or the sheep - come home, or until their train station in Hornsby shows up as it did for Norm.
Norm had a couple of cracker sheep shagging jokes and his one about Kiwis being the best sports lovers in the world because they come from AoteaRower where they sit down and go backwards was hard even for me to volley one back across the Ditch too.
The banter was flowing freer than a cold XXXX until the train hit a bumpy patch when I asked about the original settlers to his great country before the convicts showed up. It took Norm a few good moments of silence, in itself a rarity in our newfound friendship, before he could come up with an answer.
"You know mate, we don't talk about it because we don't want to own up to it and we all carry it around with us, especially us old diggers who know what happened with the stolen generation."
I had the feeling from the lowering in the dulcet tones of his voice, and the glassing over of his eyes that had seen plenty in his life, that Norm was way outside his comfort zone, in a conversation he could not laugh off.
But he was keen to listen as I told him a thing or two about what was going on our side of the ditch in Aotearoa when it came to addressing the wrongs of the past.
I went on to tell him why I was on the train in the first place visiting Aboriginal communities off the beaten track, trying to get a better understanding of how we can help kick-start a process of reconciliation by normalising something so simple as understanding the many place names with Aboriginal meanings that many Australians live in.
Norm had no idea what any of the places the train stopped at meant. As for the "Abos" reclaiming their indigeneity, he was lost in translation.
When I told him about Australia's Stonehenge just back up the track by Brunswick Heads, and how many, including myself, believe it holds most of the answers to the unlocking of the earliest civilisation outside of Africa on the planet, he swore he was going to Google it when he got home.
In between our yarning and dining on first-class railway tucker, we both tuned into my on and off cellphone texts from a mate in Brisbane, who was watching the Steamers and relaying the score. By the time the 40-all extra time came into play, we had no coverage, and it wasn't until I pulled into Central Station in Sydney that I got the final result.
By then Norm had long gone and I don't think he will have really wanted to know who had won.
A draw was a good way to finish our train trip. A bob each way on life is what I called it in my diary. Sharing a seat and a few yarns on what living meant to us from both sides of the backwards rowing, forward-thinking Ditch.
I learned from an old digger knocking on 90 how to laugh at life and look after your mates and, hopefully, he learned a little from me about how to treat the indigenous people of the land we all get to call home.
Both of us agreeing old age creeps up faster than an outback tracker looking for tucker and both of us agreeing we wouldn't be dead for quids.
