The Indian-Pacific

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Although this was technically just a journey getting one place to another, we thought 44 hours warranted it's own quick entry!

We boarded the 'mighty' Indian-Pacific on the morning of Sunday 18th at East Perth train station. As we headed for our 'Red Kangaroo Daynighter' carriage (AKA the bit for people who can't afford sleepers) we caught a glimpse of the 'Gold Kangaroo' passengers settling in and couldn't help being reminded of the Academy Award winning movie Titanic!

The journey was broken up a bit with stops in Kalgoorlie and Cook and even us paupers in third class had a lounge car to go and relax, so it wasn't all bad! What is bad, is the train feels like it has the handbrake on the whole time and the average speed is less than 85km/h! There's only one actual line of track across the country and the train has to give priority to all the freight trains so we're slowed down even more by having to sit in sidings waiting to be passed or overtaken. You can't help feeling that with a bit of investment they could travel it in half the time and more people would probably use it!

We got to Kalgoorlie at 10pm Sunday night and had 3 hours to kill. Whilst there were tours available for $20 or so, it seemed a bit pointless in the dark so we headed to the main road with fellow traveller Peter from Germany who'd been here briefly and knew where the pubs were! The only pub open had all the bar staff in underwear only, much to the delight of the miners who took up most of the bar stools in there! We drank up fairly quickly but it's all life experience I guess!

After some poor sleep, we then reached Cook on Monday lunchtime 3 hours behind schedule. Cook is basically a ghost town in the middle of the Nullaboor Plain with a population of 8 who are just one family who service a rest stop for the freight trains etc. There are lots of empty buildings there as the population was several thousand before the rail industry was pretty much killed off, and is a bit eerie and a bit depressing as a result.

Thankfully overnight the train made the time up and we got to Adelaide on time at 7am Tuesday, almost jetlagged at the thought we'd lost an entire day from our week. Although seeing as it was a Monday, I guess worse things could have happened!

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Photos

The Indian-Pacific
Helpful sign for just in case the driver forgets, presumably?

The Nullaboor
View from train at 11 a.m. monday.

Cook
Ooh, spooky!

The Nullaboor
View from train at 5 p.m. monday.