Sydney to Bogan Gate
The following is an extract from The Antipodean Express: A Journey By Train From New Zealand To Spain by Gregory Hill and has been republished with permission.
The once-a-week Indian Pacific train to Perth via Adelaide is huge. It fills two platforms, and they shunt it together on departure. Three-quarters of a kilometre long. A rail link from Sydney to Perth via Melbourne was established in 1917, but the journey originally involved at least five changes of train. This was because pre1970, the railway was cursed with different gauges (rail-widths) in different states – a long-hung-over legacy of Australia’s preFederation colonial past.
One train could not travel right across the country until the standard gauge of 1.435 metres was established from coast to coast, and the Indian Pacific was inaugurated only in 1970.
Even then our destination of Adelaide was not on the route; it was connected to the Trans-Australian Railway with standard gauge rails as late as 1982. The Indian Pacific service developed into a serious passenger transport option, with four departures per week in the early 1980s.
Then tumbling airfares saw the train’s frequency tumble; it now operates just once a week as a sort of cruise ship on rails.
We discovered which platform our half of the train was on and walked some vast distance to our carriage. Into our pokey little cabin with its seat facing backwards, and a letter informing us that there had been a rock fall somewhere on the track and we wouldn’t be making the scheduled trip through the Blue Mountains but detouring south and through Goulburn and Cootamundra.
Well, I had been really looking forward to going through the Blue Mountains by train, but so be it. At least we got there in the car yesterday.
After a while the train was shunted together and we departed for Adelaide, half an hour late. One thousand nine hundred kilometres, just over 24 hours. We entered a tunnel and stopped in it – for 10 minutes. Then we started again with a jerk and very slowly wended our way south-west through suburbs that became increasingly unfamiliar.
Once we hit the countryside, enthusiasm levels increased considerably as we bimbled through lovely rural Aussie scenery, sitting with a prime view in the comfortable lounge car. There was an extraordinary selection of retirees on board. Every kind of shape you can imagine.
Welcome to retirement! This is my world now! Poor Anne is, I think, the youngest person on the train, apart from the staff.
Our unexpected route took us on the New South Wales’ Main South Line, through Mittagong where I played with the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra in the 1990s, and on through Moss Vale and Goulburn. Here, we passed the junction for the branch line to Canberra, the Federal Capital, 90km away to the south-west.
Sometime after Goulburn it was dinner time: Crispy little poussins and a perfect fillet steak. After dark we skirted Cootamundra, famous as the birthplace of both the eponymous and endemic wattle tree and the legendary cricketer Don Bradman. Both Australian icons.
Of course, the Aussies love a sporting hero and in 1997 the prime minister anointed Bradman The Greatest Living Australian. Most Australians are still familiar with the 1930s’ hit Our Don Bradman.
Cootamundra also marked the end of our journey on the Main South Line. We turned right for Stockinbingal and headed north on the very bumpy freight-only Forbes Line through Berendebba and Daroobalgie to connect with our original route at Parkes on the Broken Hill Line.
Anne and I returned to our cabin, where the beds had been made up: Anne above, me below. What had seemed pokey was now just cosy. We climbed into the comfortable beds, put the clocks back half an hour for South Australia, and I fell asleep quickly. I was woken around midnight, in the vicinity of Bogan Gate, by incredibly violent shaking and a full bladder.
We were already restored to the Broken Hill Line, heading west. I’d missed Parkes, home of the renowned Parkes Observatory and its 64-metre pivoting radio telescope. The telescope was the co-star, along with Sam Neill, of the 2000 movie The Dish. Still, at least I was there for presumably appropriately named Bogan Gate.