An epic excursion across the Outback
A train journey that reminds you of your place in the world, writes Andrew Voerman.
The beauty of the Ghan Expedition is that it puts everything in perspective. It started on the platform in Darwin, Australia, where the train that was going to take us all the way to Adelaide, almost 3000 kilometres south, sat waiting. The first thing you notice, as you walk to your carriage, is that it is really, really long. On an average trip, it is 774 metres from head to tail, and there have been times where it has stretched for more than a kilometre.
The Ghan is named for the 19thcentury camel drivers who helped explore Australia’s remote interior, and were believed at the time to have come from Afghanistan. From Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north and back again, it runs all year round, tracing a line through the middle of the continent – going the other way is the Indian Pacific, from Sydney to Perth and back, owned and operated by the same company, Great Southern Rail.
But in the middle of the year (when temperatures are at their coolest), the return trip, from Darwin to Adelaide, turns into the Ghan Expedition, and the journey is stretched out by a day, allowing those on board the chance to get to know a bit more about the remote areas they are passing through.
For most of the 2979km of railway, we were surrounded by an environment drawn in various shades of green and brown. There were plenty of sections where there was plant life, but also plenty where there was none, and except for when we passed through towns, none of it looked like somewhere you would want to break down. It was just there, largely untouched by humanity, a reminder that the world was around long before we were.
But while the scene outside of the train was rather unforgiving, the scene inside it was anything but. A gold class cabin has everything you need for the three-night stay – a couch to sit on, that is turned into a bed while you eat dinner, and back to a couch again as you have breakfast; a range of shelves and cabinets, including a safe, for storing belongings; a large window, for taking in the views; and, behind a door like something out of a spy novel, a toilet, and a shower, that was plenty warm and which dripped down onto the tracks below.
The actual train journey took place mostly as we slept, but also as we wined and dined in the evenings, and as we got ready to face the day in the mornings. You sleep in your cabin, of course, but you eat and drink in the lounges and dining rooms, both of which feel like a throwback to a more refined age, when trains were the preferred method for travelling long distances.
There are multiple lounges and dining rooms along the train, each taking care of several carriages. You get given a time to come through for your meal, whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and once seated, you have a choice of several dishes – including
some especially Australian options like crocodile sausage and buffalo curry. Cooped up on a train for three nights, it would be easy to accept a lower standard of service, but there’s no need – everything was as delicious as if it were cooked in a proper restaurant on land, not a cramped carriage.
The pleasures weren’t only on the train, however. What makes the Ghan Expedition special is that each day between Darwin and Adelaide there is an off-train excursion – chosen, on the first two days, from a range of options – that allows you to explore the Outback, rather than just pass through it.
On the first afternoon, just a few hours after we set off, the excursion was a cruise down the river through the Katherine Gorge, carved by nature out of the land around the town of Katherine, which is home to 6000 people and the fourth-largest settlement in the Northern Territory, behind Darwin, Palmerston and Alice Springs.
The Katherine Gorge is actually 13 separate gorges, situated in Nitmiluk National Park, which become one during the wet season, when the water rises over natural barriers, a change that also allows dangerous saltwater crocodiles to call it home. But in the dry season, that wasn’t a worry, and so we were able to sit back on our ferry and soak in the afternoon sun and the sound of nature – Nitmiluk means ‘‘place of the cicada dreaming’’ in the local Aboriginal tongue.
On the second morning, we pulled into Alice, where a wide range of excursions awaited us, the most extravagant being a scenic flight to Uluru, which is four hours away by car, not just around the corner, as my mental map of the red centre had led me to believe. By air, it still took about two hours, once we’d thrown in a detour to see some of the local landmarks.
Spaces are limited on the Uluru trip, which carries an added cost, beyond that of the train journey, and often
There were plenty of sections where there was plant life, but also plenty where there was none, and except for when we passed through towns, none of it looked like somewhere you would want to break down.
requires advance booking. We flew in a handful of small planes – the one I was in had four passengers and a pilot – and for someone who hasn’t always been at ease with flying, it was a slightly nervy experience. But after making peace with the more dramatic possibilities, it wasn’t hard to sit back and enjoy the wondrous views that were on offer.
Uluru comes into sight on the horizon long before you reach it, a big red blob set against a blue-green haze, and as we flew around it, it was easy to grasp why it is such a special place. It captures your attention because it’s just there, a massive red rock, in the middle of an area where there’s not a lot else worth noting. From the ground, it was even more impressive, especially when we got to see some of the Aboriginal rock art painted on its surface, a reminder of just how long it had been standing.
That night, after flying back, we capped off a long day with a gathering at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station, the site of the first European settlement in central Australia, which has been preserved as a tourist attraction. There, we enjoyed a meal under the night sky, and were given a laser-guided tour of the stars, which were clear for all to see, so far away from the bright lights of big cities. Having just received a real sense of perspective, flying over the vast expanses of the Australian Outback, the show was a further reminder of our small place in the universe.
The third day took us to a place that has stood in for the moon and Mars in many movies – Coober Pedy, a small town in northern South Australia, which is famous for two things – opals, and the fact that many of its residents live in houses carved into the hillside, known as dugouts, which provide relief from the heat.
Leaving the train on a siding in what was literally the middle of nowhere – nothing but brown, barren land in every direction – we boarded buses for the short journey into town, and soon enough, these little mounds began blotting the landscape – the products of opal digs, left in place so that people don’t go wandering around and falling into holes.
Coober Pedy is filled with people chasing the potential thrill of making it big, by stumbling along a rich source of opal – Australia’s natural gemstone. But that means it is also a town filled with people chasing a thrill that will never come, creating an odd vibe to go with the odd landscape.
After a tour through the town, and a meal in a cavern in an underground opal mine, we headed further out into the wilderness, to see the dingo fence, which runs from South Australia up through New South Wales to Queensland, and was built in the 1880s, to keep dingoes out of the country’s south-east, where they were a threat to sheep. Even with that bit of knowledge in mind, it was still quite something to see a wire fence seemingly standing in the middle of nowhere. Plied with drinks and nibbles, it was a final chance to stare into the distance, and appreciate how enormous and empty Australia can be.
Waking on the final morning, I could sense Adelaide, and the end of the line, was close at hand. The surrounds were a lot greener than they had been for most of the past three days, and as we reflected on the journey over one final breakfast, they turned into suburbia – a sight which had not been missed – and finally, the station.
After a farewell to the crew, who were one of the highlights of the trip, always there to take care of you, with a smile on their face, it was time to return to city life. Caught up in the hustle and bustle of passengers moving to and fro, clinging on to the natural wonder of the Ghan might have been a struggle, but as it has turned out, it wasn’t at all.
The writer travelled on the Ghan Expedition courtesy of Great Southern Rail.