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Module 3 My First Ride on a Train My name is Alice Thompson. I come from Sydney, Australia and I'm 18 years old. Recently I had my first ride on a long-distance train. And what a ride! A friend and I travelled on the famous Ghan train. We got on in Sydney and we got off in Alice Springs, right in the middle of Australia, more than four thousand kilometres away. We spent two days and nights on the train. The train was wonderful and the food was great. We ate great meals cooked by experts! For the first few hundred kilometres of the journey, the scenery was very colourful. There were fields and the soil was dark red. After that, it was desert. The sun shone, there was no wind and there were no clouds in the sky. Suddenly, it looked like a place from another time. We saw abandoned farms which were built more than a hundred years ago. The train was comfortable and the people were nice. During the day, I sat and looked out of the window, and sometimes talked to other passengers. I read books and listened to my Chinese cassettes (I'm studying Chinese at school). One night, at about midnight, I watched the night sky for about an hour. The stars shone like diamonds. Why is the train called the Ghan? A long time ago, Australians needed a way to travel to the middle of the country. They tried riding horses, but the horses didn't like the hot weather and sand. A hundred and fifty years ago, they brought some camels from Afghanistan. Ghan is short for Afghanistan. Camels were much better than horses for travelling a long distance. For many years, trained camels carried food and other supplies, and returned with wool and other products. The Afghans and their camels did this until the 1920s. Then the government built a new railway line, so they didn't need the camels any more. In 1925, they passed a law which allowed people to shoot the animals if they were a problem. In 1935, the police in a town shot 153 camels in one day. Module 3 我第一次坐火车 我的名字叫艾丽丝.汤姆逊，我来自澳大利亚悉尼，今年18岁了。最近我乘火车进行了我的第一次长途旅行。多精彩的旅行啊！朋友们和我乘坐著名的阿富汗火车旅行。我们在悉尼上车（get on），在澳大利亚中部的艾丽斯.斯普林斯下车（get off）。行程四千多千米。我们坐了两天两夜的火车。 火车很豪华，饭菜很可口。我们吃的美味饭菜是烹饪大师（expert）们做的。旅途(journey)的前几百公里风景（scenery）优美，在一片片的原野，土壤（soil）是暗红色的。之后，全是沙漠（desert）。太阳高照，没有一丝风，天空也没有云彩。突然，我们好像来到了另一个时代的一个地方。我们看到了建于一百多年前被遗弃的（abandoned）农场。 火车很舒适，车上的人们也很友好。在白天，我坐着看窗外，有时和别的旅客聊聊天。我读读书，听听中文录音带（cassette）(我正在学中文)。有一天晚上，大约在半夜（midnight），差不多整整一个小时我都在注视夜空。星星像钻石（diamond）般闪闪发光。 为什么这列火车被命名为阿富汗呢？许久以前，澳大利亚人需要一种途径去国家中部。他们尝试过骑马，但马不喜欢炎热的天气和沙地。150年前，他们从阿富汗买来一些骆驼（camel）。Ghan是阿富汗的缩写（be short for）。 骆驼比起马匹更适合长途跋涉。多年来，受过训练的（trained）骆驼运出食物和其他供应品，然后运回羊毛和其他产品（product）. 阿富汗人和他们的骆驼这样运货一直持续到到20世纪20年代。后来政府修建了一条新铁路线，因此他们不再（not…any more）需要骆驼了， 1925年,他们通过一项法律，规定如果这些动物成了麻烦，允许人们射杀（shoot）他们。1935年，一个城镇上的警察在一天之内就射杀了153头骆驼。 |
