The Ghan: or how I spent 25 hours in a train (Part II)

(In order to read part I, click here)

Let the journey begin...!! 

So there I was in The Ghan with a backpack full of water, snacks, clothes... and all the basic things you may need during a week in the middle of the Australian desert. We left Adelaide around noon but we wouldn't make it till Alice Springs until the following day at 1 pm. The train made some six or seven stops throughout the 1500 km journey... so if you calculate the average speed you will notice we weren't going THAT fast.

I started munching some sandwiches I had prepared for lunch enjoying the view, the company of my monkey Marcelino and the old Vietnamese lady sitting next to me. She offered me peanuts a couple of times. Such a nice smiling lady!

More peanuts

That was a slow and nice trip. Talking to the nice-looking American backpacker sitting behind me and the old and hilarious Aussie bloke next to her. I got offered some more peanuts. I read a book and a magazine I had with me, explored the train... but most importantly, I enjoyed the views from my window. It evolved from the Mediterranean forest around Adelaide, to the famous vineyards of South Australia, to steppe and finally to desert. An endless desert. Just amazing.

One of the last few farms before reaching the Outback

The most absolute nothing

A few hours later, the train kept on rolling towards the heart of the Australian desert and the sun was going down. After several unsuccessful attempts of conversation with my Vietnamese travel companion I could only understand that she had come to Australia after the Vietnam War.   She couldn't say much more in her more than broken English. I believe she noticed my frustration and she offered some more peanus with a smile. So I happily accepted her apology peanuts and exchanged for some of my wasabi coated peas. At that moment I was completely dead. My whole body was in pain, my neck hurted from talking to the passengers sitting behind me and I was terribly thirsty from eating so many peanuts so... I decided to explore the train a bit more.

I found the dining car -if I can call it that way. It was more like a living room / bar. So I ordered a coke and read for a while... until a really strange-looking bloke sat next to me and started reading my book over my shoulder. I tried to stop him by giving him some "stop-that" stares and coughed uncomfortably, but it didn't quite work out so I walked back to my car where I stayed for the rest of the trip.

Más nada cerca de Coober Pedy

The sun also rises

That was a long night, but somehow I managed to get some sleep in my not-so-comfy seat. The first rays of sun woke me up.

Marcelino stretching himself in the morning

Once I was fully awake, I noticed the landscape hadn't changed one bit since sunset. Just red sand and some dried up bushes for as far as you could see. There was not a single human in hundreds of kilometres around. And then we reached the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory, not far away from the Tropic of Capricorn. Even though the landscape had not changed, the air seemed denser than usual for some reason... 

Excuse the bad framing of this picture... but I tried to do my best  from the moving train

Welcome to Alice Springs

The train ride was coming to an end. As Alice Springs got closer the air seemed denser and we could not enjoy a clear view of the horizon anylonger. The wind had started a small dust storm. That meant we wouldn't enjoy clean air on our arrival, but that was still normal, wasn't it? That's one of the many cliches we have about the desert: a dry and sandy place with a few dust storms every now and then.  

Two cows trying to hide from the coming dust storm

After a few minutes we couldn't see more than a few metres away

McDowell Ranges, on the other side Alice Springs was waiting for us.

The dust storm was fine, I just didn't expect to have rain. There's just a few rainy days in the centre of Australia every year, so I guess I was just unlucky. It started with just a few drops of water and continued with torrential rain. It stopped right before we reached Alice Springs, and the view was just spectacular. A flash flood had blocked the Stuart Highway. The wind had done the same thing to the electricity pylons and in spite of the heavy rain there was still heaps of sand from the dust storm around us. 

A view of Alice Springs from Anzac Hill

Old Stuart Town Gaol, Alice Springs.

That's the way my week in the desert started: in a muddy town with the air full of dust, with its only road flooded, and all the shops closed down because of the blackout. Murphy's Law says: "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong"... at least I was not robbed!

The Ghan is slow and maybe a bit of a torture. It is not that cheap (about the same prize than the plane even with the cheapest train ticket) and any sensible enough person will tell you to fly there. If you have time and love trains as much as I do... you must try it, though. You'll thank me -if you still talk to me. 

I'll write more about the Outback later on, but next article will be about the day I spent in 5 different countries. 

The Ghan: or how I spent 25 hours in a train (Part I)

It was a beautiful September day in Sydney...

Spring had sprung, essay week was coming and I had no plans yet. I was living downunder and obviously I was not going to stay at home writing essays and other assignments...

My first choice -and taking into account the relatively short distance- was Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. It was a family matter. These islands were discovered by  my great-etc.-great-grandfather Álvaro de Mendaña in 1568 while trying to find the Terra Australis Incognita he would never find.

Santa Cruz / Nendo Island (Solomon Is.), where Álvaro de Mendaña died.

It was a shame I couldn't really afford that trip. Just the return ticket to Honiara was around 600 bucks. So... I decided going to the Australian Outback instead. 

Quick stopover in Adelaide
So I took the first Qantas flight to Adelaide. If you take a look to a map of Australia, Sydney seems relatively close to the capital of South Australia, but they're actually 1300 kms apart. I had 4-5 hours to stroll around the city centre and buy some goodies before my train ride. 

This is the city of Adelaide as seen from the plane. You can appreciate the Parklands surrounding the city centre's square mile. 

As you could appreciate in the picture, Adelaide is a planned city. It was completely designed by Colonel William Light in 1837 (year in which the new British colony of South Australia was established). But even if Adelaide is a planned city it has a special charm of its own and it is not cold, incoherent and -somehow- overrationalized like... erhm... let's say... Canberra!

 

Chinatown and St. Francis Xavier's catholic cathedral

The city hall

 Marcelino, my travel companion, at Victoria Square

So what is The Ghan?

If you're a train lover, you've probably heard about The Ghan. It is comparable to the luxory of world-famous Blue Train in South Africa, the no-longer existing Orient Express or the also Australian Indian-Pacific. 

The Ghan was built in order to connect South Australia with Alice Springs (a city in the middle of the continent). The original plan was to connect Adelaide to Darwin, but just the first half was finished in 1929 -even then the last few kilometres were done on camel caravans. The connection to Darwin was not completed until 2001.

The name comes from the original nickname: The Afghan Express. Hundreds of Afghani, used to life in the desert, were hired by the British to build the tracks and also to transport provisions on their camels to Alice Springs. By the time they were no longer needed, they abandoned their camels in the desert. That explains why there's so feral camels in central Australia. 

The train itself is impressive... a countless number of carriages comprise this convoy and it is virtually impossible to see the whole train unless it is from the distance. You can hire an entire carriage for yourself. Slightly cheaper is the Platinum class providing you an en-suite cabin ocupying half a carriage. If you don't have that much cash, you could always buy a Gold Class ticket... sharing a cabin with other two people. However I travelled in the Red Kangaroo Class. And that was not a joke.

My carriage as seen during sunrise

Let the journey begin...! (To be continued on the second part...)