Going, going, Ghan: all aboard the outback express
Australia’s most famous train journey has been rebranded as a luxury travel experience that combines nostalgia with modern high-end dining.
Australia’s most famous train journey turned 90 last year, and as we stand on the platform of Darwin’s Berrimah railway station preparing to climb aboard for the 3000km ride to Adelaide, it looks like a good number of our fellow passengers are of similar vintage. Train travel being a nostalgic experience, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Ghan has become a rite of passage for a certain post-retirement Australian who wants to reconnect with a storied piece of our pioneer mythology – albeit with airconditioning, gourmet food and a crisp chardonnay.
Back in 1929, the original steam train between Adelaide and Alice Springs cost 12 quid for a first-class seat in a carriage featuring windows open to clouds of sand blasting across the desert and into your sandwiches. Floods and breakdowns were common, women were initially forbidden from buying tickets and the maiden voyage turned up nearly five hours late. In recent times the Ghan confronted a more modern blight: cheap airfares, which caused passenger numbers to plummet in the early 2000s.
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Under its current owners it’s been rebranded as a luxury travel experience that successfully combines nostalgia with modern high-end dining. The steam trains of old have been replaced by diesel locomotives, but the 20 carriages on our train are circa-1960s originals, refurbished without losing their original charm. The cabin doors don’t even have locks, which could be cause for consternation if it weren’t for the passenger demographic – clearly, crime is not going to be an issue. Besides, anyone happy to fork out $3000 for a four-day train ride is unlikely to be interested in stealing our iPads. For those with trust issues, there’s a safe in every cabin.
We pull out of Darwin at 9am sharp after being serenaded on the platform by one of the Territory’s ubiquitous bush troubadours. Our Gold Twin cabin is more than comfortable; the cushioned bench seat has ample room for sprawling and there’s a warm retro ambience to the wood-panelled walls and Bakelite light fixtures. The ensuite bathroom is tiny, but the shower runs hot and strong for our entire trip. The fold-down bunk bed is more than long enough to accommodate my lanky six-foot frame.
I’d pictured the three-night expedition from Darwin to Adelaide as a long, indolent daydream of reading, dozing and gazing out of the window at the unfolding emptiness of the Centre. Clearly I’d failed to read the itinerary, because a couple of hours out of Darwin we’re asked to select our daytrip excursions for the journey ahead. The train, it turns out, will be stopping over successive days in Katherine, Alice Springs and Coober Pedy so we can venture out and see the sights.
After making our selections we set out to explore the train, which is when we discover that indolent daydreaming is not the primary aim of many of our fellow travellers. Unlimited booze is a feature of the Ghan’s bar car, and by 10.30am a handful of oldies knock back their first Crown Lager of the day as the low-slung town of Adelaide River slides past our window under a big blue Territory sky. One exuberant traveller – a goateed 60-something in a Jimmy Barnes T-shirt – begins waving his beer around while singing Do The Locomotion and I make a mental note to choose our dining companions carefully.
Katherine is our first stop, 317km south of Darwin on the river it was named after. We arrive in the early afternoon and take a boat tour of the gorge that’s known to the local Jawoyn people as Nitmiluk. It is a cloudless winter day and our guide provides a steady stream of crocodile fun-facts and geological commentary from his steering position at the rear wheelhouse. “If you look straight ahead you can see a vertical fissure in the face of the gorge which was created several million years ago,” he notes as we cruise past a sheer 90m sandstone edifice. “And if you look behind you…” Heads swivel. “…you’ll see a really handsome bloke.” Boom-tish.
Back on the train as dusk begins to fall, we settle in for an activity that consumes much of our Ghan-time: eating and drinking. Dinner is served in the Queen Victoria dining carriage, an old-world haven of white tablecloths, chintz curtains and silver service. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting of modern train cuisine but certainly I hadn’t envisaged eating prawn san choy bow with caramelised macadamia nuts followed by roasted Port Lincoln kingfish with pea purée, baby carrots and enoki mushrooms. Hats off to the Ghan’s senior chef, Joseph Cobiac, for the unerringly excellent food.
Tables in the dining carriage seat four so you share most of your meals with other passengers, which can be a mixed blessing. My sympathies go out to an adjacent couple, who are trapped with a boorish geologist explaining in exhaustive detail why climate change is a myth. Luckily we find ourselves sitting across from a pair of 70-something hotties, Faye and Xena, who regale us with their adventures and offer tips on raunchy Netflix shows. (“It’s very sex-ual,” Xena says of one miniseries, arching a brow.)
From Katherine it’s a 1200km run south to Alice Springs, passing through Tennant Creek and skirting the western edge of the vast Barkly Tableland, nearly all of which passes by in darkness while we sleep like babies to the chugging rhythm. One could argue we didn’t miss much, other than staring across infinite scrubby plains for 10 hours, but I would’ve liked the chance to absorb myself in the meditative emptiness of the Dead Heart for a few hours. Because not long after breakfast we pull into Alice for a full day and night of off-train sightseeing.
It pays to check the schedule of the various packages on offer. Our Ghan Expedition packs a lot into four days, perhaps too much. Our stopover in Alice, for instance, involves a coach ride into town to shop, followed by a restaurant lunch, followed by another coach ride to the Alice Springs Desert Park, followed by a coach ride back to the train to shower and change in time for another coach ride to the Telegraph Station for dinner under the stars. That’s a lot of time on buses, particularly when many fellow passengers are embarking and disembarking on rickety knees and walking sticks. The Ghan’s Adelaide to Darwin run is shorter but offers more train time, and other packages feature overnight stays in Alice or side trips to Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas).
Our third day’s stop is the one Iam most looking forward to: Coober Pedy, in South Australia, the famed opal town where the mind-roasting desert heat forces most of its inhabitants to live underground. We are travelling in winter, so conditions are relatively civilised. The Ghan comes to a stop 40km from the town at Manguri Siding, and we travel by coach through an eerie landscape marked by thousands of earth mounds from the opal digs that look like giant conical molehills. As the town comes into view – low-slung corrugated roofs set against pale, bare earthen hills – our driver pipes up with a heroically prosaic running commentary: “On the right is the BP service station where many locals buy their petrol; coming up on the left you’ll see the laundromat…” Truly, there’s a reason sightseeing in Coober Pedy is all subterranean.
I’ve been hoping to eat lunch in the sandstone tunnels of the Soft Rock Café and perhaps check out the underground caravan park, which looks in the promotional photos like a nuclear bunker with tents. As it is, lunch is held in a working mine that has bizarrely installed a restaurant in its tunnels, nailing lights to the wall to create a décor best described as faux-Flintstone. Then we repair to the underground Serbian Orthodox Church, constructed in the 1990s by volunteers who excavated with picks, shovels and explosives. Its vaulted interior and scalloped sandstone ceiling are wondrously wacky, albeit sadly underappreciated: regular services stopped once most of the Serbians left town. (Note to other religious pastors: study local demographics before spending three years building an in-ground church.)
That evening, after al fresco aperitifs at Manguri Siding, we board the train for the final run to Adelaide. Fifteen minutes out of Coober Pedy the low sun burnishes the sky to the west, where long clouds stretch across the distant horizon. I finally get my meditative moment watching the spidery shadows of spinifex slanting slowly across the desert floor, as the oldies hit the bar car for one last knees-up.
The Ghan Expedition departs Darwin from March to October. Gold Twin cabin from $2999 per person. journeybeyond rail.com.au