The Ghan 1

 

 

The Ghan, as both the train and the journey is referred to, is one of the great train journeys on the planet. The name is an abbreviated version of The Afghan Express, which was unofficially bestowed on the service in 1923, by one of its crews in honour of the Afghan camel drivers who arrived in Australia in the late 19th century to help find a way to reach the country's unexplored interior.

This was one of the pre-booked elements of my trip that I was really looking forward to. Essentially it was travelling by train the 2979 kms. from Darwin, in the north of Australia, to Adelaide in the south, with a stopover in Alice Springs, to visit Ayres Rock, about half way through.

As a UK resident there is a fantastic deal to be had with Southern Rail, who operate the service, their rail card, at a cost of £200, entitles you to unlimited travel on any of their services, including this and the Sydney to Perth, Indian Pacific route. You have to pay a small fuel surcharge, but still £20 for 3,000 kms. is a bit of a result, especially as the basic, standard adult fare is about $900 (£600).

The Ghan offers a Red, Gold and Platinum service. The rail card traveller can only access the basic Red service, but within that you get a reasonably comfortable, reclining seat in a carriage that has shower facilities and access to a cafe car, but alas, no disco!

By way of comparison, the Platinum passengers are picked up and dropped off at either end of their trip, have free access to some of the  excursions and get an en suite cabin, with foldable bunk beds, a personal steward and as much food and booze as you want. But ..... Platinum will cost you about $3500 per person (that’s about £5000 per couple), I suppose it depends how much you can drink, because whilst the dining is fine, the scenery is what is not to be missed, and the view is the same from both ends of the train!!

On arrival at Darwin station, one hour before departure, the place was a hive of activity. There are people who travel miles just to photograph The Ghan and a gaggle of them were assembled together with expectant passengers, relatives and well wishers, maintenance crew, cleaners, station staff and a swarm of well dressed stewards.

The average age of those travelling seemed to be about 70, supporting the fact that this trip has grown in popularity as a ‘bucket list’ activity, and the air was full of ‘oooohs’, ‘aaaaahs’, excited chatter and clicking cameras as the huge locomotive, sporting the iconic livery, thundered into the station.

The huge train appeared even more impressive as there was no platform and the theatre continued as the choreographed stewards placed sets of stainless steel steps outside each of the carriage doors to afford access.

Putting aside the razzmatazz, as a piece of engineering the engine is immense and the pulling power to drag along some 35 carriages, (49 when it is really busy) plus a few, fully laden, car carriers is awesome. The simple, classic design of the carriages forewarns you of the relatively basic interior of the ‘cheap seats’ carriages and the cafe car, whilst spotless, looked like most fast food restaurants did 10 years ago.

It wasn’t what you might call luxurious down the Red end of the train, but it was clean, reasonably quiet, spacious and as comfortable as any aircraft I had been on and after all I wasn’t there for luxury, I just wanted to have crossed this huge country from top to bottom, have seen some kangaroos and to have ridden The Ghan.

Right on time, we were ready, everyone was boarded, the smartly dressed stewards had given us the safety briefing, a couple of loud blasts of the horn had echoed around the rail yard and then, with the bell ringing ceremoniously at the front of the train, the carriages creaked into life, the wheels squealed with reluctance the train jolted into motion and we set off toward our first stop, Katherine Gorge.

All too soon we experienced one of the potential problems of this type of journey, its unpredictability. Despite the hoo-hah, The Ghan is just another train to traffic control and must ‘play by the rules’, the steward explained to us after we had been stopping and starting for what seemed like ages. Apparently rail safety regulations restrict certain combinations of passenger and freight trains in the same sector, so when we came across a delayed oil carrier, we had had to wait and the net effect was that, although Katherine was only 3 ½  hours away, by the time we arrived there, we were a huge 2 ½  hours behind schedule.

As a consequence, we had unfortunately missed the scheduled excursion and could not get to the famous Katherine Gorge. So, instead of marvelling at one of the natural wonders of Australia, I got to walk around a small shopping mall and listen to groups of drunken locals  argue outside the tourist information centre, for two hours. I honestly felt as if I had gone for a day out in Newport, but at least I got to buy some snacks for the train and see a statue of some bloke on a horse.

 

The scenery from Darwin had been a bit of a surprise. I fancifully imagined wall to wall red sand and rocks, tinder dry trees, mobs of kangaroos hopping competitively alongside the train and maybe the odd dingo. Instead it was mainly flat rough grassland, horizon to horizon, with odd patches of scrub land, some of which had evidence of bush fires and the only sign of life were termite mounds!

Reboarding the train the light was beginning to fade quickly. We had a long haul ahead, arrival time in Alice Springs was at 9.10am, 15 hours away, but the good thing was that, with dusk and dawn, to come, we were in prime time for spotting a ‘roo ... or two, and maybe the super sunset was a good omen.

In Alice Springs you are pretty much in the centre of Australia. Much debate has taken place as to whether the ‘centre’ should be calculated this way or that, but suffice to say you are within half a day of all of the suggested answers in Alice, as it’s known locally, and you are definitely remote. Although not remote enough for the local marsupials, apparently, because although I think I might have seen a ‘tail’ as we pulled into Alice, but there was still no definite sighting.

I had stopped here to make an excursion into what’s known as the Red Centre, because this was an area, allegedly, of nothing but the dusty, desert I had expected to see already. I would continue my journey onto Adelaide on the next Ghan, that would be in town in 3 days time.

Meanwhile, after an hour seeing all that Alice town centre had to offer and a reasonable night in a backpackers hostel, I was back into the old ‘up before dawn’ routine, as 22 of us set off in a mini bus for Uluru/Ayres Rock, nearly 500kms. away.