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So I have finally found the momentum to leave Sydney. Even though I have been having an awesome time there, I felt it would be a disservice to both myself and Australia if I did not explore at least a few hundred kilometres beyond the suburbs of the first city.
But then where to go next? After weeks of putting off the decision I eventually concluded that I needed to go somewhere the complete opposite of Sydney. To move to another large city in Australia would probably never live up to my past seven months. Calm down all you Melbourne and Adelaide fans, winter is descending upon your southern skylines and I have frozen enough in Sydney this Autumn to know I need to head nearer the Tropic of Capricorn. Also I have left behind so many wonderful friends in Sydney that will take more than a few months to replace, so another city will just feel lonely. I'm not really a city girl at heart anyway - despite my recent love affair with Sydney - I crave countryside and the nosey stares of strange neighbours! I have no desire to travel up the overpopulated East Coast, shagging and puking
my way from one backpacker ridden paradise to the next. That image alone prevented me from considering Australia as a viable travel destination for at least five years! So I turned my sights westwards instead to that huge empty space on the map called Western Australia.
The next tough decision was how the hell to get there? Working 50 hours a week meant I left it till the day after I quit work before I started searching for transportation to cross a continent. Flights to Perth and Broome were through the roof, Jetstar and the likes playing on my incompetence at making decisions to triple their prices every couple of hours. More to the point I really didn't want to fly. My carbon footprint the past couple of years is through the roof. According to George Monbiot, (whose book 'Heat' I recently read and took to heart), I am personally responsible for the destruction of the planet and the deaths of hundreds of Ethiopians due to my selfish need to see the world. My selfish need to see the world isn't about to stop so I figured the least I could do is consider alternative travel arrangements where applicable.
I also have a strange desire to experience the immense size of Australia, something 3 ½ hours in a plane would not achieve. So instead I chose to travel by train.
Back to the old fashioned civility of travelling on the rails. That romantic image of the kilometres being eaten up as you slumber. The gentle rocking of the carriage and the hum of the engine. Conversations with strangers in the buffet car. The sight of kangaroos bounding through an empty landscape reaching the horizon out the window. And not just any rail journey, but the Indian-Pacific, one of the world's iconic rail journeys.
Ha ha, and then came the reality...
Wednesday 4th May 2011
It didn't bode well when I went to pick up my ticket at Sydney Central Station and the man at the ticket office said I was brave to be travelling all the way to Perth in a Red Seat. Yep, that's right, I couldn't afford a berth in a sleeper cabin (at about five times the price) so I decided to travel the entire 4352km journey to Perth in one go in the cheapest seat available. That's three days and three nights sitting
Seat S-19
My home for 3 nightson a train! My problems were only just beginning it seemed. Next my bag was overweight when I went to check it in, despite hemoragging possessions for the past few weeks. Personally I blame Jeff, who had set me up for my journey with about five kilos worth of chocolate and snacks! I went to open my bag to find something else to throw away and the key jammed in the padlock. Thankfully Kate eventually picked the lock with a paperclip and I could check in my bag. By this point I was more than a little stressed and so Jeff and Kate took me for farewell Yum Cha to calm me down and fortify me for my journey.
On our return to the station I was informed of an indeterminate delay on my train arriving. Jeff and Kate had better things to do than wait around with me on a platform all day so after a several farewell photos and a lot of hugs I was on my own and awaiting the start of my next adventure. The train had been due to depart at 2:55pm. At about 3:40pm it rolled sheepishly into the station and disgorged a
bunch of weary passengers. For the next two hours I sat on the chilly platform outside my carriage in the dwindling light, while they cleaned and refuelled and did all the behind the scenes chores that keep a train chugging back and forth across the country. Eventually we were let on board and at 6:15pm we slowly pulled out of Central Station and crept past the bright lights of suburban stations packed with homebound commuters.
My home for the next 67 hours (no more delays permitting) is a recliner seat in a carriage of forty others. Thankfully we are not fully booked the entire journey so as we depart Sydney I can spread out across the neighbouring seat. I have been prewarned of the need for my own blanket and pillow and am fully prepared with snacks, crosswords, the paper, several books and a cheeky bottle of Stones ginger wine! Within an hour of the journey finally starting claustrophobia and boredom set in. In one afternoon I'd already read most of Frankie magazine (an amazing magazine not only named after me, but also full of articles about afternoon tea and kooky crafts and vintage fashion!), twenty pages of To
Kill a Mockingbird, flicked through the onboard magazine, stared into space, eaten an apple and half a bag of Jaffa chocolates, and text everyone I could think of.
My solution was to cough up the extortionate $25 to gain access to the Red Lounge car. An unthinkable fee until I realised I would not only gain space, social opportunities and a power plug, but unlimited cups of complimentary free tea and fruit. Aha, I silently cried out, that is my kind of deal for I can easily drink more than $25 worth of tea in three days! So here I am, sitting in an armchair sipping ginger wine from a tea cup, on my first night on the Indian-Pacific. We have just glided past Katoomba and the highest point in the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately I am yet again destined to see nothing of these scenic attractions. It is not cloud that obstructs my view this time but the dark blanket of an early winter evening. For a while the whole train was plunged into this darkness as the generator passed out but power has been restored, for now!
Perhaps something I should have considered before booking on this
journey is the fact that I find it incredibly difficult to sleep sitting upright! I am also very grumpy when I haven't had much sleep! Lights went out (not due to generator problems this time) at 9.45pm last night, so for the next three hours I read by the flickering light of my head torch. When Harper Lee failed to send me to sleep I tried a combination of Damien Rice, Fleet Foxes and Jack Johnson. When they didn't successfully lull me I attempted a variety of contortion positions, wrapping myself in every direction around the arm rests. Tired and with an aching back, but still not asleep, I had a final brainwave. Pushing my bags aside I curled up on the floor in the space between my seats and the ones in front. At least I was horizontal, even if the cold floor kept waking me up. Tonight I will find some spare clothes to act as a matteress and I think exhaustion and an extra glass of wine may be my friends in slumber!
Thursday 5th May 2011
After a few hours fitful dozing I awoke as the dawn lightened the sky and the passengers in the
Menindee Lakes
full of water! seats in front of me started up exchanging their life histories. Through bleary eyes I witnessed my first sunrise in a very long time. The burning orb of gold hanging above a flattened landscape of scrubby bush stretching for hours. I forced myself to further consciousness and was rewarded with kangaroos and emus darting away from the train as it crawled through the bush. We are now four hours behind schedule. I'm not really surprised considering it doesn't seem like we've progressed above 50mph overnight and we're now crawling along at about 30mph due to track improvement works!
Our slow progress meant that all the Aussies on board got nearly an hour to gawp in wonder at the full and murky waters of Menindee Lakes, which seemed not that interesting to me until I was informed that it was a barren dust bowl a few months back before the drought broke. If I realised at the time it was one of the few sights I would see on this journey I would have appreciated it more! When we eventually trundled into Broken Hill around Midday we were given fifteen minutes to stretch our legs rather than the hour and
half tour advertised in the brochure. I ignored the strict instructions for us not to leave the station and strode out down the main street as far as the first intersection. The chances of me ever visiting Broken Hill again are fairly slim and I wanted to say I had at least seen more than a dead pigeon and an overflowing skip, which were the exciting sights from the train window on the way into town. Luckily one hundred metres down the street were a couple of old buildings and not just a McDonalds so I took a photo and dutifully returned to the station to feign interest at the ladies selling crochet doilies and biscuits on the platform.
After Broken Hill I had a lovely old lady called Pat sit next to me. I didn't begrudge her my extra seat because she chatted happily to me about all her grandchildren's travels and kept me updated on where we were in the vast countryside. In return I snuck her cups of tea from the lounge and helped carry her bags when we eventually reached Adelaide. You'd have thought that would have earned me a few brownie points with the
Karma bods but apparently assisting old ladies is no longer enough. I was gutted that instead of a gastronomic tour of Adelaide Market, all I got to see was a darkened platform and the station cafe. Instead of making up time and leaving Adelaide quickly, we stood on a chilly platform for half an hour while men in orange vests tinkered with the toilet in our carriage. Eventually we were let back on and I had to hold back tears when I realised that the train was basically full to Perth and I would be sitting next to a tramp for the next two days. The horror of having to sleep centimetres from him sent me staggering to the lounge car where I am hiding now drinking alternate cups of tea and ginger wine and coming up with a plan to survive the next 48 hours with no sleep!
Friday 6th May 2011
Thank god for fellow travellers. Since leaving Adelaide a new sense of camaraderie has descended on the train, particularly amongst the hardcore crew who can now easily identify the other passengers crazy enough to travel all the way from Sydney to Perth in a seat! Bartering
some of my immense chocolate supply for sleeping pills meant I managed to ignore both the tramp and the crick in my neck last night and got about six hours sleep.
Today has ended up feeling like the longest day of my life. I awoke at sunrise to an unchanging landscape of flat, scrubby bush. At about lunchtime the vista changed dramatically to flat, scrubby bush, but this time with no bushes. We had entered the Nullabor Plain, a vast stretch of empty desert twice the size of England, covered in tough, tufty grass and home to about six people. For the next five hours we saw nothing but the gaping blue sky and the odd Wedge-tailed Eagle soaring across the plain. The tracks that run through the Nullabor are the straightest in the world. For 477kms there is not a kink or a curve in them.
The only thing to break up our progress was the occasional settlement leftover from the first days of the railway. We stopped for 13 minutes at one of these settlements, Cook. Smack bang in the middle of nowhere, Cook once thrived with a school, hospital and gaol. Now this decrepit outpost is home
to two permanent residents and the odd resting train driver. We stopped to top up the water tanks and let bored passengers buy certificates to prove they had been there. As we stepped down from the train we were confronted by harsh sunlight and swarms of flies. Despite being confined to the train for two days, I was almost glad to step back on board and escape this inhospitable station. After Cook we paused briefly at Forrest, surprisingly lush with trees, although this little oasis is named after a former politician rather than for its vegetation. Another two person town, Forrest has a runway to rival Sydney but without the duty free shopping. Maintained as an emergency landing strip, the couple that live here survive off deliveries from the Indian Pacific so we dropped off post and groceries as we trundled past.
After a dissapointing sunset - and a more exciting near miss with a herd of cattle – darkness took away from us even the meagre views we had become accustomed to. Camaraderie and contraband alcohol were flowing by this point though so we resorted to scrabble and card games to pass the ever extending time (we had just
crossed into Western Australia and gained another 90 minutes to our day). We began to wonder if we had entered a time warp or a black hole. Maybe it was Groundhog Day? What if purgatory is a never ending train journey to Perth? What is actually in those sleeping pills?
Eventually we sidled into Kalgoorlie late at night. No chance to see the biggest hole in the world though. No time to cruise the streets under the watchful eyes of the Ladies of the Night. Only time to refuel the engines and take in a lungful of 'fresh' air amongst the relieved smokers on the platform. As we pulled away the glittering lights of a nearby mine lit up like the Manhattan skyline. Another sightseeing opportunity slipped away as the train staff tried desperately to make up delayed hours at the expense of passenger experience.
Saturday 7th May 2011
Another morning, another sunrise, another crooked back, another snorer shaking the carriage. But this morning there is also a change to the atmosphere on board, a sense of relief and hope tinges the air. Conversations are now about
when we get to Perth, not
if. The landscape has changed
Broken Hill station
locals selling tat to train passengers! too. Trees, houses, roads and telegraph poles all break the monotony of the flat bush. We pick up speed as we descend the Avon valley. Hot air ballons scatter around us in the soft morning light. The land lifts and folds around us as we enter the steep valley.
All of a sudden the Quarantine Inspector has passed through the carriage and we are braking. Suburban scenes flow past the windows and converge into a station. The train has stopped and the doors are opening. Can it be true, we've actually survived the journey and made it to Perth?!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Hi Frankie
We follow your travels and hope you will take a look at our blog from the rails. We too, took the train from Sydney to Perth but our experience was the opposite of yours. We were in the gold cars with sleeping berth, dining room and lounge. It was a magnificent experience. When we made the trip we were lucky to see a fair number of kangaroos in the brush. It sounds like you made the best of your situation.