The Trans-Siberian, the Orient Express, the Royal Scotsman – just some of the world’s great train journeys. Even the names conjure expansive landscapes, crossed by shimmering steel horizons dividing the vast open spaces.

Australia has several of its own romantic, adventurous rail adventures. And being some 4000kms across and 3000kms from top to bottom, rail is an ideal way to see the country and visit some of the gems that lie hidden far from the madding crowds.

The Ghan: Australia’s Red Center by Train

The Ghan: Darwin to Adelaide

Being a frequent traveller across the centre of the great brown land, The Ghan is an ideal alternative to the roads that, over time, offer a more predictable series of crossings to the Northern Territory and beyond. On the first few passes, the rail carriage is like a dot in the midst of an endless canvas, a rolling nothingness that stretches beyond the road’s edge. But with repeated viewings this boundless freedom can almost become like the recounting of a story many times told, the roadhouses ticked off like boxes in a well-known quiz and the bumps and furrows becoming a roll-call for the destination.

The Ghan is on many accounts a new experience from this merging vista: the open spaces of the carriages afford the genial passenger a stroll and a chance to talk with travelling strangers. Food is elevated beyond the culinary pleasures of road-house fare and the view suddenly becomes a portal to multi-dimensional bliss.

Consider the difference between a car - with its windscreen caught before your gaze, offering a streaming line of tar (or dirt should you be lucky to be “off-road”) winding endlessly before you – and the train: from your enviable lounge-car vantage, three “screens” of rolling desert views flicker and sway from the smooth, quiet advance of the diesel locomotion. The bush here starts not 30 metres from the roadside, but a mere metre from your window – offering a staggered perspective of a tree-line in the background and flickering stands of lone eucalypts flashing by in the foreground – your eye drawn hypnotically from far to near, as your day relaxes into a true meditation on the meaning of space. Even a few hours of this remarkable saturation of the senses unfurrows that travelling brow and leaves you feeling somewhere between refreshed and strangely immersed in the place of your arrival – laden with context and full of the surrounds that came to create these small oases in the remote outback landscape.

An even better reason to pass up the interminable offer of a bus trip over the same extended distances (2.30am “get out of the bus” anyone?) is that the train is in many cases cheaper And quicker. So if the poetry of the moment doesn’t move you, your wallet will at least thank you.

The Ghan: Big, red, named after camel drivers

The Ghan, named after the Afghan cameleers that helped traverse the deserts of inland Australia, departs twice a week from Darwin and Adelaide (Wednesdays and Saturdays from Darwin; Sundays and Thursdays from Adelaide), and takes two nights to cover the 2,979 kilometres from the tropics through the red centre to the Southern Ocean.

Katherine and Alice Springs are featured stops on the journey giving you a few hours to explore and feel the temperature shift. The train also drops off and takes on passengers along the route, including Tennant Creek, but in some cases, such as Coober Pedy, stops 30 kilometres from town and will only allow departure should you have a guarantee that someone will pick you up. It is certainly a long walk in and it is not so much the desert sun you have to worry about – but the chill of the desert night as its an after-hours stroll…

The Indian-Pacific: Australia East to West

The Indian-Pacific: Sydney to Perth

The Indian-Pacific is so named as it connects the coasts of Australia – the east’s Pacific to the west’s Indian Ocean. The train departs from Sydney on Saturday and Wednesdays via Broken Hill, Adelaide, Port Augusta, the mysterious open plains of Cook (a chance to stretch your legs) before the final port of call at Perth (where the service departs Wednesday and Sunday for Sydney).

From the gradual climb over the Great Dividing Range through the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to the treeless plains of Western Australia’s Nullabor some two days later, the Indian-Pacific presents three days of contrast for your travelling consideration. And if that hasn’t got your reaching for a timetable, the journey boasts the longest stretch of straight rail, at 478 km that’s plenty of time to set world records to construct the fastest travelling house of cards or match-stick palace.

The Overland: Adelaide to Melbourne

For a shorter journey of distinction within Terra Australis, The Overland connects Adelaide and Melbourne on a daytime service that departs three times a week. First run in 1887, this 828 kilometre trip now allows passengers to see South Australia meld through the border deserts and the spectacular Grampians to the cosmopolitan capital of Melbourne – and also serves to connect travellers to the Ghan and Indian-Pacific. Stops include Murray Bridge, Bordertown, Nhill (more than nothing!), Dimboola, the gateways to the mountainous might of the Grmpians (Horsham and Ararat) and the growing town of Geelong.

Jack says: Get your backside trackside on an Australian train

When you consider that flying may only take an hour, but the time to and from the airport, queueing and enduring the cute synchronised emergency displays amidst offers of “tea” and “coffee” on the plane all help blow the total travel time out by extra unaccounted hours, the train almost seems faster by comparison, giving you time to take in the landscape and perhaps even indulge in the lost art of conversation.

As far as the “how” of the journey’s go, services and prices vary from overnight seats (you can’t sleep in the lounge car, comfortable as it may be) to sleeper cabins and sometimes even a private carriage (should you and the celebrity of your choice be needing a moment from prying eyes). It is also possible to take your car with you on the Ghan and Indian Pacific rail services, so if you wish you can unload and take off under your own steam at your destination, or just drive straight back again for a bit of contrast and compare.

–Jack Brown

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 12:11 am and is filed under Australia & Pacific, Destinations, Suggested Itineraries, Travel Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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