Indian Pacific Train

The Great Nullarbor Plain Experience: April 10-12, 2008

We experienced a new favorite way to travel. We boarded the Indian Pacific Train at Adelaide’s Keswick Station about 6:30pm. We were escorted to our nice little room in the Golden Kangaroo Service. It had a sofa we could relax on and look out the window and watch the world zip by. The room converted into 2 bunks, and it had a very nice compact bathroom. The toilet and sink both folded up into the wall leaving a lot of room for the shower. All the comforts of home. We went to the lounge car and were given a bit of information about our trip over the next day and a half. We would cross the Nullarbor Plain and arrive in Perth on Saturday morning. We then went into the dining room, complete with nice table settings, and had a nice menu to choose from, excellent food: appetizer (they refer to it as the entre’), a choice of 3 main dishes, a choice of 2 desserts, coffee and after dinner mints. What a way to travel. Our sleep was a bit disturbed the ride was quite bumpy, and we were not used to sleeping on a train.

We awoke Friday morning to a beautiful scene of the Nullarbor Plain, an incredible length of nothing – over 1500 miles in length including the world’s longest straight stretch of railroad tracks over 300 miles without the slightest curve or turn. We witnessed this most remarkable of landscapes – vast limestone plateau, consisting of little more than saltbush and blue bush (scrub). While looking out at the landscape we saw 3 wild camels and several wedge-tailed eagles flying by. The Aboriginal word for it is Ooridin – waterless; Nullarbor is from the Latin “nullus arbor: no trees. Early afternoon we stopped in Cook, population 4. This township is about as remote as it gets. The real meaning of outback. Cook used to serve as a thriving railway town with over 300 hundred people, a school, a golf course (without a blade of grass) and even boasted a brass band. After dinner we stopped at Kalgoorlie. This is a gold mining town. We took a “whistle stop tour” driving through the nicely maintained historic town, down to the huge SUPER PIT mine. It is over 2 miles long, about 1 mile wide and over ½ mile deep. It was a quite amazing sight.

Saturday morning we awoke, a bit better rested, packed, had breakfast, said “good bye” to the many nice people we met while on and train and headed into Perth Western Australia.