Australia: Riding the Ghan

Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 by BCAA in International

TRAIN TRAVEL

A train has replaced Afghanistan camels on journeys across the Outback

by Daniel Wood

The vast and arid Outback is to Australians what the Arctic is to Canadians: mythic, seldom visited, the object of fascination, and subject of occasional tragedy. Crossing it under normal circumstances could be unpleasant. Landmarks are few, desert tracks transitory, water scarce. (And guidebooks remind backroad drivers that drinking one’s own blood is not advisable.) But seated in a window-seat on the continent-spanning Ghan train, a traveller can contemplate fundamentals while being indulged in the luxurious.

The 2,979-km-long railway line crosses Australia’s heartland from Adelaide in the country’s south to semi-tropical Darwin, home of legendary Crocodile Dundee, in the far north.

The 2,979-km-long railway line crosses Australia’s heartland from Adelaide in the country’s south to semi-tropical Darwin, home of legendary Crocodile Dundee, in the far north. (Or, with a Darwin departure, vice-versa.) Opened in 2004, the Ghan commemorates, in name, the Afghanistan camel trains that once provided Australia’s explorers with transportation through the continent’s formidable interior. Today, the train follows a similar route 19th century adventurers took across the spinifex-dotted, pointillist desert where lonely cattle stations now exist, and aboriginal people stand at rail crossings, waving as visitors pass.

On my journey south from Darwin, egrets rise from billabongs and wild buffalo flee the rumble of the Ghan’s approach as the kilometre-long train rockets along at 110 km/h. With welded-steel rails, there’s no clickety-clack. Dirt tracks lead away into eucalyptus forests and thousands of massive, stalagmite-like termite mounds draw gawking Ghan passengers to the windows. This is the land of “Waltzing Matilda,” cooibah trees and all. The swagmen (itinerants) may be gone, but a half-million feral camels graze a terrain too desiccated these days for jumbuck (sheep). Inside, champagne appears, hors d’oeuvres of local emu pate are served, and the passengers settle into conversations prompted by the prospect of the long journey ahead. The train rolls on; an elegant dinner (barramundi or kangaroo), too much wine, the mesmerizing effects of motion and darkness reduce me to stupor. I fall asleep to a sky full of stars.

At dawn, I join other pre-caffeinated travellers in the lounge to witness sunrise over the Outback. The land is dead flat, only the margins of the dry watercourses green with trees. And kangaroos now: fleeing our appearance. Up ahead is Alice Springs where I’ll leave the Ghan and acquire a Jeep for a week’s drive southward, 1,599 kilometres to Adelaide. In the distance in those days ahead, I’ll sometimes see the Ghan, off in the distance, a silver arrow of modernity passing through the desert’s timelessness.

Getting there: Book early. Many break the 50-hour journey – as the author did – mid-continent at Alice Springs for a memorable side trip to Uluru National Park (Ayer’s Rock).

>>For info: http://www.gsr.com/

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

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