It’s a sad moment, but I’ve now realised that I’ll be dead before Melbourne has a train to the airport.

I’m 57 years old. I eat green things. I exercise. And so I might just crack the 90s. Or even beyond, if all the gods like me.

But there’s no spinach leaf, push-up, cold plunge or liver cleanse that can get me on a train to catch the VA 739 to the Gold Coast. I know I’m not going to make it.

Perhaps it’s just not meant to be. Like Socrates with an iPad — it pushes against the natural flow of time.

But we’re not talking about something historically out of place, are we? It’s a train. We used to be good at trains.

My grandfather was a bush timber cutter along the Murray. He felled the red gum to make the sleepers for the railway tracks.

He was like thousands of other men who only had saws, axes, muscle, horses and tea boiling over the fire to get the job done. And they did. They connected the towns, and vapour trails from steam engines covered the state.

So we know how to do it, and we know we want to do it, we just can’t do it anymore.

This week, the brand new premier announced Melbourne Airport rail as a priority.

Yet we’ve been here many times before. After the announcements come the same arguments about the route, the station location and the cost, and then we’re back at the start with lots of blah blah and no toot toot.

But it’s not really money and debate that halts the train — it’s the lack of political pay-off.

Any competent politician — or even an incompetent one — knows that someone else will be cutting the ribbon.

The truth is a train to the airport is going to take a particular kind of leader, and I’m not sure we make them anymore.

Who knows, we may get a surprise after November, but our long track to Tullamarine is a tale of much pessimism.

So I hope I’ve got a few good decades left. And if I’m lucky, it’ll be full of wonderful things — watching the Ashes at Lord’s, nailing the solo on Comfortably Numb, perfecting paella, and becoming a grandfather too.

But I now know what I won’t get.

Justin Smith is an author, journalist and broadcaster