We each had one item on the RTW trip from our wish list. Mark wanted to trek with the gorillas – check! Susan’s wish list item was a bit tamer – ride the Indian Pacific train across all of Australia. We took it from Perth to Sydney – from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean for 4352 km or 2704 miles. This trip takes about 4 days and we had the fun of sleeping on the train for 3 nights.
The compartments are small so all these bags went to a luggage car not to be seen for 4 days!
The toilet and shower compartment were very functional! Each compartment for 2 people has a little toilet room with a shower. The shower worked better than a few we encountered in hotels in India.
The beds are stored during the day.
We had our backpacks and one small cloth bag for our clothes. We had to buy the cloth bag in Bangkok!
Dave couldn’t wangle a visit to the engine compartment so he settled for climbing on the engine while we made a stop in Cook.
When Dave Young from Fort Collins heard about the train, he invited himself along since he’s a HUGE train buff and this one is on his bucket list.
The Indian Pacific left at 10 AM Sunday morning from Perth and climbed out of the suburbs into the hills. The ticket prices include food, unlimited drinks including wine, champagne, beer, gin and tonic, coffee, soft drinks and tours at each stop.
The tour part is important because our first stop along the way was at 10 PM Sunday night in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The tour took 2 hours on the bus and showed us where the houses of prostitution were and where the huge gold mine is. It’s a pit mine, about 1.5 kilometers deep and is worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We want to come back in the daytime for a real mine tour.
The Kalgorlie mine is a gold mine operating 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Then it was back on the train for our first night of sleep in the little bunks. Mark got the top one! Sleep was OK although at 3 AM, the tracks got a little rough! Mark’s bunk had a rail he could put up just in case he might want to roll out.
Mark got to use the ladder to crawl into the top bunk.
Day started with breakfast in Rawhinna about 6 AM outside on tables. Rawhinna is on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain and is the start of 478 kilometres (297 miles) of perfectly straight rail – the longest in the world . On Day 2 we stopped at Cook for a resupply of water for the train. Cook is pretty much a ghost town after the Australian government privatized the rail. The only things there are an airstrip for emergency commercial flight landings in the middle of the country (Never used), fuel and water for trains, and overnight accommodations for freight and passenger train crews.
This explains exactly where Cook is in Australia – 1523 km to one coast and 1984 km. to the other coast.
A tropical storm had just crossed Australia and the Nullarbor Plain was very green.
The train stretched fro about one mile.
Day 3 started with Adelaide at 7:30, Mark took the tour of the Adelaide Oval – cricket and Aussie Rules and Rugby – while Susan took a bus tour of the city. Dave left us here for 5 days in Adelaide before he flew home.
Adelaide Oval. Mark didn’t get to go on the pitch since they were getting it ready for a cricket match
The train stopped in Broken Hill in the afternoon. We saw the Main Drag show in the hotel that was used in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”.
Proof we made it to Broken Hill
One drag queen from the show in Broken Hill
On Day 4, the train wandered its way through the Blue Mountains and suburbs of Sydney before arriving about noon at Sydney Central Station.
By the time we reached the Blue Mountains, we’d entered a completely new climate area. Lots of trees and from here the train wanders into Sydney.
In between stops, we used our cabin for reading or naps or we wandered up to the Lounge Car and had a glass (or 2 or 3) of wine while we talked with other passengers. We met Gayle and Mark from Sydney and even got invited to their house for dinner. Another US couple we met, and there were not many of us, were from California and they’d been on a diving trip for about 2 months. We had drinks with them in Sydney.
Overall, the trip was fun. There are miles and kilometers of nothing in the middle of Australia. This trip drives home the point that Australia is about the size of the US but only has about 30 million people! Lots of it are pretty uninhabitable in the middle of the desert.
The next train trip to do in Australia is the Ghan that goes from Darwin south through Alice Springs into Adelaide. This train has been completely updated and we heard is quite posh.
Thanks Susan and Mark for indulging me invite myself along. It was a great trip and good to see long lost friends. And make some new ones. Trains are the best for that. I hereby declare my intention to invite myself along for the Ghan. :>
Let me add a bit about Adelaide to supplement the expert commentary on the rest of the world. It’s an unheralded gem. The other coastal capitals get all the press, but Adelaide’s manageable overall size and compact, walkable CBD make it nice. The beach at Glenelg is the match of Sydney’s Bondi or Manly, and reached by a vintage tram. There’s that train thing again. The Mt. Lofty Botanic Garden highlights the unique flora of Australia and there’s a wildlife park with koalas and that sort of thing.
I was fortunate to be there during the festival season. March includes the Adelaide Fringe Festival with hundreds of offbeat acts (I saw a great circus from Quebec – I bought my ticket at the box office from a CSU grad! – and a stand up show) and the more mainstream Adelaide Festival (I saw Grace Jones in a surprisingly good show and a ‘symphony’ performed entirely on recycled and found objects with a 400 person choir). In addition, the WOMAD Festival, which started right after I came back, features women performers and the Writer’s Festival gathers many of the world’s top authors for readings in the Botanic Garden.
I didn’t have time to visit the nearby McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley or Adelaide Hills wine regions. I can attest to the quality of the offerings from their cellar doors however. And Adelaide, along with all of Australia, has fully embraced craft beer. Mmmm. Beer. Cheers to that!
If you start the Ghan at Darwin, you end up at Adelaide. Perfect! Can’t wait for next time.
I love trains too, so this goes on my bucket list. Perhaps sometime next year when we are on sabbatical in New Zealand
Reminds me of the train we took from Bangkok to Chiang Mai…. we had second class tickets so had beds but not a private car. It was absolutely fine though an enabled us to meet some great people. But we did check out the private first class cabins and they looked exactly like yours!