One day I took a train. It pulled away from the steamy tropical shores cruised
by monster crocs, the rainforested hills where you could swim in natural
swimming holes with water clean and sweet enough to drink, and trundled
across a seemingly endless desert, dotted with prehistoric paintings, sacred
places and even occasional waters. At its centre, I broke the ride. To watch
the sun rise above the searing fresh curve of the planet — the only sounds
birdsong and crickets, the air dry as crystal, no sign of human existence
from horizon to horizon — was to be touched with a sense of our loneliness
as we tumble through space.
Back on the train, the days grew longer as we headed south. The next ocean we
reached swept in from the Antarctic. Here I swam, shivering and exhilarated,
with wild sea lions who nuzzled my face and feet, anxious to play. Then it
was up into hills where some of the finest wines in the world are made, to
round off a continental crossing with some of the best food and drink this
country has to offer.
Australia’s Ghan train (which,after the recent completion of its latest
stretch, now links Darwin with Adelaide), while not altogether what it is
cracked up to be, is a lot more besides: not least the sum of the parts it
takes you to.
The giveaway is at Darwin. It doesn’t go there, but stops 18km short at the
container port of Palmerston. For this is a railway for freight, put
together by a consortium of very hard-nosed private companies. Passenger
trains are just a bonus: there is one a week out of Darwin, freight trains
every day.
The station, therefore, is a temporary affair (pending pay dirt from
passengers), where little thought has been given to the peculiar problems of
boarding a train more than a kilometre long in the tropics, where either sun
or rain can beat down on the often elderly passengers. Getting the carriages
in alphabetical order (or at least informing staff and passengers what the
order is) would be a great start.
The track has only been built for speeds of up to 115kph (72mph). The rolling
stock is part of a job lot, some 35 years old, acquired from the former
Commonwealth Railways, and given to paroxysms of shuddering and clattering.
State of the art it is not, rather a strange hybrid: not quite the Orient
Express the publicity might have you believe (though on-board service and
food are excellent) nor quite a proper train. There are few stops (save
waiting for a freight train to pass) and almost all passengers are
holidaymakers: backpackers on rail passes in the cheap seats, overseas
tourists and Aussie pensioners in the sleepers. No farmers with dusty boots
and eager dogs, no country wives off to the big city or children to school.
It seems churlish to cavil on some of these points. After all, it is not every
day a transcontinental railway is completed, and this claims to be the
world’s first north-south one, making Australia the only nation with
transcontinental railways to the four points of the compass. The excitement
while we are waiting to board is palpable, especially among the Aussie
pensioners who make up the bulk of the “guests” (as announcers address us).
As one poster greeting the first Ghan put it: “Welcome, we’ve waited 100
years.”
THE GHAN is always “the legendary Ghan” in its announcements, which is perhaps
unfortunate since it is legendary above all for being late. The dream of a
rail link between Darwin and Adelaide was half fulfilled by a line from
Adelaide up to Alice Springs in the 1920s. But steam trains must go where
water does, and where there is water in a desert, there can be flash floods
(as well as the usual termites). The Ghan was often weeks late. A new, less
vulnerable, route with diesel locos and concrete sleepers resulted in 1980.
The final link to Darwin was completed, after privatisation of much of
Australia’s existing railways, under a BOOT (build, own, operate and
transfer back) scheme by an international consortium, which has the running
of it for 50 years.
The compelling mathematics related to freight. Sending goods from Europe and
Asia to Australia’s populous south via Darwin and the train, rather than
around the continent by ship, would save significant time and money, create
jobs galore in the Darwin region, and lower the local cost of living, since
no longer would everything have to come from or via the south. I was anxious
to ride the Ghan soon after its February inauguration — it seemed a good
opportunity to test the marketing people’s contention that the Top End’s
“wet” (November to April) was a splendid time to visit Kakadu and Litchfield
parks before boarding.
They were indeed blissfully empty, with just enough rain to keep us cool, but
vast areas were inaccessible (I only know one sure way through serious mud
and that is aboard an elephant). Wildlife was harder to see than when
concentrated around limited water. Plus the small and interesting places to
stay were closed because it was low season.
At places such as Nourlangie, we visited 20,000-year-old Aboriginal camp and
rock-art sites. The good guys seem to be on the ascendency in much of
outback tourism and our guide (sorry, “roving interpreter”) was part of an
award-winning network of operators committed to a thoughtful and sustainable
approach to the environment and cultures in which they work. With Andy,
squatting by these paintings, to the soundtrack of Australia’s brilliant
birdsong and a waterfall, under a canopy of leaves and rock overhang, I
began to understand something of this new but ancient continent I was about
to cross instead of being parachuted in here and there.
Litchfield may well be at its best in the wet, since one of the main draws of
its hills are rock pools above the reach of the “salty” croc. Swimming with
just a couple of others in water good enough to drink, close to the buffet
and blast of a waterfall in a rainforest glade, is about as blissful as
swimming ever gets, and bliss it was at Florence Falls.
But the wet had two last strokes to pull: in Litchfield we were unable to
reach the jump-off point for a wetlands cruise I dearly wanted to do, though
waiting in vain at the Monsoon Cafe with its peculiarly outback characters
(off the wall yet utterly practical, arcanely wise and laconically friendly)
almost made up for it; then at Katherine, the Ghan’s first stop, where it
waited four hours, supposedly for us to take a boat ride on the gorge — only
20 people were accepted for the trip, no credible reason given (the truth
was they had only one boat powerful enough to handle the river in full
spate).
FROM ALICE there are two trains a week heading south, so you can either do a
local excursion and get back on the same train, or go bush for two days or a
week. The most compelling side trip is that to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata
Tjuta (the Olgas), but we decided that with our own guide and a 4WD we could
break away from the coach-tour circuit, take the dirt road Mereenie Loop via
King’s Canyon (Watarrka) to Uluru and still do it in two days. Our guide,
Sue, and various people she knew along the way brought the great emptiness
alive. The Aboriginals see epochal struggles and mythical personae in what
to us are just hills and rocks. Best of all, they don’t say “this land
belongs to me” but “I belong to this land”.
All these places can affect visitors in strange, almost mystical ways, but
none quite like Uluru, the world’s largest monolith. Climbing it nowadays is
discouraged by its Aboriginal guardians as an insult to a sacred place. Few
do, and instead make what incursions they can into its chasms and water
runoffs in whispers. Sunset and sunrise (the latter at the Olgas), in
particular, have people standing in awe, as if for an extraterrestrial
event. On our way back, in a roadhouse on the outskirts of Alice, we meet
Dinky the Singing Dingo, about to be an answer in the 20th- anniversary
edition of Trivial Pursuit, who walks a piano keyboard, howling tunefully
with a faraway look in his eyes.
ONE CAN’T say the view from the Ghan as we head on south is particularly
exciting. There is an awful lot of flat, and one learns to detect cattle
country even without the cattle by its battered, dusty mien. But its slow
elisions are part of the power of Australia, and at dawn on the third day we
rattle into the arable foothills of an area on the Southern Ocean.
The ride is smoother now. Is the Ghan’s often rough ride caused by its track,
then? Not entirely: the lounge is notably smoother than the other car-
riages. A proper Aussie sense of priorities: doesn’t matter if you fall out
of your bunk just as long as you don’t spill your beer. The Darwin paper has
Woolworths complaining about vibration damage to goods shipped by Ghan.
My one plane flight — there and back from Adelaide — is to swim with sea lions
at Baird Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. Land at Ceduna, drive for two hours
through rolling wheatlands and see but one car, briefly and in the rear
mirror. Alan Payne, who has befriended sea lions he takes tourists to meet,
scrupulously avoids bribery in the form of feeding. The young male pups just
love to play. The sight of an intelligent, quizzical eye but inches from
your own in the ocean is one you’ll never forget. Or them taking the mickey
out of the competition: when dolphins start to interact with us, the sea
lions take to doing dolphin leaps and clapping their feet.
Back in Adelaide and up to the vineyards of the Barossa Valley. Cheering tales
of conservation paying off: when the big growers wanted to pull 150-year-old
vines that were out of fashion in the 1990s, a conservation order was
slapped on them. Now those same Shiraz venerables produce Langmeil’s “The
Freedom”, which has won prizes worldwide. The baker in this old Lutheran
community (Barossa Deutsch is a distinctive dialect) still uses a wood oven.
And yet the people here seem to succeed with almost casual brilliance at the
new: many of today’s wine-makers learnt from scratch and I meet a young
former winemaker who turned cheesemaker only two years ago, Victoria
Glaetzer, who you just know will be winning prizes in no time.
From the wilds of the north to the fine flavours of the civilised south: it
may not yet be state of the art, but the Ghan will lead you to some of the
best Australia has to offer.
Mark Ottaway travelled as a guest of the Australian Tourist Commission and
Qantas
Travel brief
Getting there: there are no direct flights from the UK or
Ireland to Darwin or Adelaide, but there are several good one-stop options.
For example, Qantas (0845 774 7767, www.qantas.com.au) has fares from
Heathrow to Darwin and back from Adelaide from £679, via Singapore in each
direction, or from Manchester from £710, via Heathrow and Singapore. Or try
the Flight Centre (0870 499 0040, www.flightcentre.co.uk). Trailfinders in
Ireland (01 677 7888) has fares from Dublin from €1,300.
The train: the Ghan’s 2,979km transcontinental journey from
Darwin to Adelaide takes 47 hours. International Rail (0870 751 5000,
www.international-rail.com) sells tickets from Darwin to Adelaide in a
first-class sleeper (single or twin berths, meals included) from £806pp; a
second-class sleeper (twin berths, excluding meals) is £644pp; with
seat-only fares starting at £204pp.
Tour operators: Austravel (0870 166 2020, www.austravel.com)
can tailor-make trips to Australia that include the Ghan. For example, 10
nights start at £1,415pp, which includes flights with Qantas from Heathrow
to Darwin and back from Adelaide, four nights’ hotel accommodation in
Darwin, three nights in Alice Springs, three nights in Adelaide, and the
Ghan in-between. Regional add-ons from Manchester and Glasgow are at no
extra cost. Or try Trailfinders (020 7938 3939, www.trailfinders.com) or
Quest Travel (0870 442 3542, www.questtravel.com).
Excursions: Odyssey Tours and Safaris in Darwin (00 61-8 8948
0091, www.odysaf.com.au) offers three-day tours to Kakadu and Litchfield
from £388pp, including lodge accommodation and lunches. Alice Springs
Holidays (8 8953 1411, www.alicespringsholidays.com) will do the tour to
Uluru-Kata Tjuta as described from £665pp for four, including lunches.
Guided wine and food tours from Adelaide into the Barossa Valley can be
organised by A Taste of South Australia (8 8271 7777, www.tastesa.com.au)
from £106pp.
Baird Bay Charters & Ocean Eco Tours (8 8626 5017, www.bairdbay.com)
charges £27 (£14 children 6-12) for a boat trip (approx 3hr) to the sea
lions and dolphins. Ceduna (2hr) is the nearest airport. Regional Express
(www.regionalexpress.com.au) flies there from Adelaide for £101 return.
Further information: call 0870 556 1434 for a copy of the
Australia Tourist Commission’s Travellers Guide, or visit
www.australia.com/sundaytimes.
