Not all heroes wear capes - one of them wears a glittering rhinestone jumpsuit, a pompadour curl and a pair of gold aviators.
That man is Peter White, a train driver who goes above and beyond to get fans of the king to their Australian holy land: the Parkes Elvis Festival in rural NSW.
Mr White will be driving the Elvis Express when it departs Sydney's Central Station early on January 9, his blue suede shoes firmly on the dead man's switch.
Having worked routes between Sydney, Dubbo and Broken Hill for 20 years, it will be his third trip at the helm of Elvis rail, with carriages dubbed the All Shook Up Shuttle, Burning Love Bullet and Priscilla's Place.
"The actual route is the same, but obviously the passengers are very different," Mr White told AAP.
"It's a party train. It's quite a spectacle, once the train is loaded up ... then it's singing and dancing all the way to Parkes."
The festival, which attracts as many as 25,000 revellers to the usually sleepy farming town in the dry heat of summer, is marking its 32nd year with the theme of Elvis's 1967 musical film Easy Come, Easy Go.
The widely-lambasted film is about a man leading a double life, working as both a nightclub singer and a deep-sea diver.
Mr White can relate to wildly competing demands in his career.
When he drove the Elvis Express soon after the Black Summer bushfires, which damaged tracks in the Blue Mountains, he took a longer route through the Riverina.
At one point, he had to shunt his carriages to a siding in 44C heat to make way for a freight train.
"So I'm walking up the ballast - which must have been about 65C radiating from the rocks - in my full Elvis suit and wig," Mr White recalled, with a laugh.
"I was a sweaty mess, but the onboard crew thought it was great. Me, not so much."
The festival, which has the stamp of approval from Elvis Presley Enterprises, began as a way to draw tourists to Parkes in a traditionally quiet season.
On January 8, what would have been Presley's 90th birthday, the festival will launch the Gates of Graceland, a full-size replica of the real thing in Memphis.
International tribute artists Emilio Santoro, Cote Deonath and Riley Jenkins will be flown in to perform ten shows over five days of festivities.
Clarinda Street, Parkes's main drag, will be packed with thousands of Elvis lookalikes, crooning buskers, swing dancers and classic car fanatics.
Mr White, who lives in Parkes, loves the way the festival transforms his town of 10,000.
"You either love it and get amongst it, or you hate it and you leave town and rent your house out," he said.
"I'm defininitely the former, I love it.
"It's always hot, the hotter the better for me."
