Adelaide to Broken Hill

Oceania » Australia » South Australia » Adelaide
October 28th 2008

Published: November 1st 2008

Edit Blog Post

TSSCCAT

Adelaide

Packing for the train

The alarm call that I had booked for the morning was ten minutes early, but this gave me the extra time to throw my things into my new case for the next part of the journey. The taxi driver Ian took me to Keswick station where I boarded the train called the Indian Pacific bound for Broken Hill.

During the journey I met a elderly traveller, he seemed to be a delightful and sprightly 85 year old who had emigrated to Australia in 1949 from Europe after listening to the first part of his life story we had lunch in the Queen Alexandra buffet car where he continued to tell me about more of his life story.

We arrived at Broken Hill at 16:30 where I had booked a tour of the town, to me this was slightly disappointing in the sense that it was a fading mining town very reminiscent of the North East during the 1980's. The locals seemed to be very proud of their cornish heritage and union links but recently 400 people had been laid off from the local Silver mine so it had this defeated air about it. The architecture of the town was

Adelaide

Meeting the train

100% Edwardian mining in character with many pubs, hotels, churches and parks. We were taken to the town's mining memorial where I noticed a few names that may be related to my mining ancestors. I soon boarded the train again and passed by the large slag heap on our way to Sydney, in a way I was glad to leave.

My elderly gentleman knocked on my cabin door and entered whilst I was on the tour he had nipped into Broken Hill and collected some information that he thought that I was interested in. All I wanted to do was have some peace and quiet before dinner but I seemed to get another installment of his life story. Through out dinner we were seated together and again I was given another long winded installment of his lifestory, in the end I asked the staff to place me on a different sitting so that I could have my meals in peace.

Totally exhausted I made a beeline for bed hoping that I would get some peace at last but just to make sure I locked my door and proped my case up against it. With this reassurance I eventually