I took high-speed trains in four countries. We are an embarrassment

Want to know the height of sophistication? It’s standing up while travelling at about 300km/h, eating a tostada (a toasted bread roll) with tomato pulp and olive oil, a slice of jamon iberico draped over the top, and sipping an icy Cruzcampo beer.

Some may tell you that sophistication is classical music concertos or hallowed art gallery halls or three-star dining rooms, but they’re wrong. It’s ham on bread and frosty lager, imbibed while the barren plains of Andalucia go charging past your window.

I’m in Spain, obviously, somewhere between Madrid and Seville. I’m on the AVE, Spain’s high-speed train network, having just landed in the country a few hours ago. This train makes the nearly 500-kilometre journey in about 2½ hours, which is just enough time to get set up then wander down to the dining car and order some snacks, which you eat Spanish-style, standing at the bar, with the locals having a drink and a chat.

Few things give you the thrill of travel like this. There’s certainly no style of movement that feels as luxurious and as enjoyable as high-speed rail. Certainly not as sophisticated. And it’s a feeling you get to have in so many countries around the world.

In just the past year, I’ve enjoyed high-speed rail journeys in four countries. There was Spain, yes, with its jamon tostada and its squishy, crowded cabin and riotous check-in procedure. There was also France, on the TGV from Paris to Tours, in a wide, wood-panelled seat sitting next to someone editing fashion-shoot photos on a fancy laptop (bien sur).

There was also South Korea, on board the KTX, which had no dining car, but the chance to grab a croissant from the station in Seoul before departure, then listening to music at 300km/h before alighting in Busan and tucking into a train station kimchi-jjigae (a spicy soup that tastes like it’s been heated on the surface of the sun).

And Japan, on the famous shinkansen, which also doesn’t have a restaurant car but does have absolute efficiency and bullet-like speed and the ability to tear through tunnels and rip through countryside while those on board sit in silence and comfort.

You can’t tell me there is a better way to travel than this. It’s the best of every world. You get to go where you need very quickly, though without the hassle and the extra transport links (getting to the airport, getting away from the next one) of air travel.

You get to watch as landscape unfolds, as the bustle of Madrid morphs into the rolling plains of Castilla-La Mancha, or as Tokyo quickly recedes and is taken over by rice paddies and then towering mountains and then more urban sprawl.

You understand the way countries and places fit together. You see life rural and urban. You do all of this from air-conditioned comfort, sometimes with a little bottle of cold beer in your hand. And what could be more sophisticated or enjoyable than that?

You know where I’m going with this, I’m sure. Because while you can enjoy this sophisticated travel experience in many countries around the world by now – and you’ve been able to do it in Japan since 1964 – there’s one rich, developed nation that stands out with its lack of high-speed rail: Australia.

We are an outlier. A throwback. Something of an embarrassment.

But we’re back on the carousel again as the federal government makes all the signs of getting serious about high-speed rail. It’s not quite the full corridor from Brisbane to Melbourne, just a short track from Newcastle to Sydney, but you have to start somewhere, and right now, we’re about 60 years behind the leaders so we might as well crack on.

I’m not here to delve into the business case for high-speed rail in Australia. Others more qualified than me are being paid far more money than me to do that.

There are a lot of great and worthy arguments you could make for high-speed rail in Australia – the environmental benefits, the alleviation of the housing crisis, the relative ease of travel compared to bus or air – but let’s not forget the sheer pleasure of this style of transport.

British pop star Ed Sheeran just travelled overnight on our existing train from Sydney to Melbourne, choosing an 11-hour slog rather than take a one-hour flight, and, you know, good on him. If we all had that much time and patience then the train between these two cities would be the way to go.

But it’s not enjoyable in its current form – or at least, nowhere near as enjoyable as the TGV, or the shinkansen, or even the high-speed rail lines in Indonesia, or Morocco, or Uzbekistan or Laos. Australia’s trains are achingly slow and you have to replace your jamon tostada with a cheese and bacon pie.

Actually, maybe we really are sophisticated.