Great grub on the Ghan
Fifty kilograms of barramundi, 40kg of steak, 352 lemon meringues. It’s just another journey on The Ghan, writes John Huxley.
Bring me a crocodile sausage… and make it snappy! It sounds like a line from an ancient Marx Brothers movie. But it is, in fact, a most reasonable request for platinum-class passengers travelling between Darwin and Adelaide on The Ghan. As the train’s senior ‘‘Chef de Partie’’ Joseph Cobiac, who devised the dish and many others, explains in the day’s menu notes, the crocodile has ‘‘long been a Northern Territory bush food’’.
Served as boudin blanc (white sausage), on potato puree with a lemon aspen sauce and sea blite, it makes an appetising and, as important, appropriate entree for guests making the historic 2949-kilometre journey through central Australia.
‘‘We try whenever possible to devise and serve food which is ‘of the place’ – of the countryside we travel through. Meals which have a history behind them, which have a small story to share with our guests,’’ he says.
Menus for the luxury four-day, three-night adventure provide daily confirmations of the chef’s policy.
They include saltwater barramundi – a name derived from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘‘large-scaled silver fish’’, served with fennel puree, baby spinach and lemon oil. Panang-style, mild buffalo curry, in recognition of the beefy-tasting meat from an animal first introduced to northern Australia in the 1820s. And apricots, which recall the enjoyment of the fruit, fresh or dried, by the Afghan or ‘‘Ghan’’, camel caravaners who worked in Outback Australia from the 1860s.
Devising, and sourcing new and old favourites, is only part of the daily miracle of providing three meals, for up to four days, to more than 300 hungry guests – taking the great train up and down, back and forth across Australia.
‘‘I really wouldn’t want to be doing anything else,’’ says Cobiac, who has worked on the Great Southern Railway for more than 20 years, devising menus, trying and testing dishes, ordering food deliveries and organising staff.
‘‘It’s a dream job,’’ he says, cheerfully revealing that on days off he happily cooks meals for him and his wife.
‘‘I can’t help myself. I just love cooking,’’ he says, adding that some new dishes undergo six months of trials before being passed food fit for The Ghan.
Some ingredients, some sidedishes – such as small, complicated, time-consuming juices and dressings, for example – may be mixed ‘‘back at base’’ and carried on board. But most of the food must, for freshness-sake, be prepared and cooked on the train. It is no easy task. The train ride can be surprisingly bumpy in places, the kitchens of ‘‘limited cat-swinging dimensions’’ and the daily rush to prepare ‘‘special