“All Aboard!” they really do say that still before the train pulls away from the station. I think air travel would be a lot cooler if they said something catchy like that before the plane takes off instead of the boring safety briefing which if you’ve flown more than 3 times in your life you can recite from memory. I honestly had no idea what was in store for me when I booked the train ticket that would take me across the entire continent of Australia. It was a 3 day journey that would take 65 hours of travel make 2 stops a day, of which you could get off the train and breathe fresh air on and introduce me to every extreme of Australian landscape. The train was called the Indian Pacific because it links the two oceans which boarder the west and east coasts of Australia. It should have however been called the Retirement Express because I have never been surrounded by so many old people out side of a Hospital or Nursing Home in my entire life. I thought it would be packed full of young backpackers taking the cheap way across the land but no.
Here’s the scene you have this massively long train probably half a mile, said train is broken up into Platinum, Gold, Red Sleeper and Red Seat services. As you can probably guess I was in the Red Seat service, which consists of 25 rows of 2 seats on each side of the train. Now these seats are fairly comfortable, have ample leg room and recline to about a 130 degree angle for sleeping, not shabby for a young person to deal with for 65 hours but picture a multitude of 80 year olds who presumably hate to fly and there you have about half my train experience.
The other half of my lovely time was spent listening to the Australian equivalent of a white trash mother and her two unruly children (roughly 4 and 2) run up and down the aisle, squealing and yelling at each other, while not once did the “Mum” try to discipline the child, all she would say (and this is engrained in my memory till the day I die, I’m sure) “Jacob, Zachary” in her twangy rural Australian accent sounded more like “Jayyyccob, Zaaackery). Oh did I mention she sat in her seat and listened to music stored on her phone at full volume for all the train to hear, all 4 songs played in a loop for like 8 hours. The kicker of course was that her and her 2 children must have each gotten up to use the bath room or throw something away in the “Rubbish Bin” which was two rows behind me about 11ty billion times, bringing her phone with her each time. I had a great stoke of luck in being sat next to a younger German guy who hardly talked at all, he spoke English perfectly but I guess was just not a talker as we had about a minute long conversation every morning, afternoon and evening. He was also small in stature which was nice as he didn’t take up much space.
The scenery leaving Sydney was beautiful, once you get out side of the city you get in to some farm land and then pretty quickly ascend into the Blue Mountains which are stunning and some what Blue Ridge Mountain-esk. I would have loved to have traveled through the Blue Mt area during the day time however I did get to view a lovely sunset from atop one of the mountain passes. Fortunately for me and the entire train the woman and her kids got off the first morning followed by a majority of the elderly that afternoon once we arrived in Adelaide. Adelaide was lovely, very nice city with very pleasant weather being that it is down South in Winter time. After a 3.5 hour stop over in Adelaide we re-boarded the train for the second night. We picked up new passengers in Adelaide that would travel all the way to Perth, which packed out the train, the day before the car was only half full. This new barrage of passengers were the younger backpacking crowd I had been expecting, mostly Germans and other Europeans.
After leaving Adelaide and traveling over night you wake up to the Eastern fringes of the Nullarbor Plain which literally means “No Trees” in Latin. The majority of the plain consists of small scrub grass and if there is a tree here and there they don’t grow above what appeared to be 6 feet tall. The Nullarbor Plain is the World’s largest single piece of limestone, so says wikipedia. It takes about 8 hours of train travel to cross it heading east to west. There is a stretch of rail on the Nullarbor Plain that is the longest straight stretch of railroad in the world and it lasts for 302 miles. We stopped once in those 8 hours at a now nearly deserted railroad town called Cook were presently 3 people live, solely to service the train. Cook is essentially as about as the middle of no where as one could expect, unless that person was Australian in which case they could site a number of towns more remote than Cook, I‘m sure.
The train did have a Red Service dinning car which was nice to escape to for a reprieve from my seat. There were not many tables in the dinning car so people would ask to sit with you if you were on person at a 4 person table. This lead to many conversations with the old folks aboard the train, them telling me stories of Australia gone by and of their travels to the states or stories of the children, you know pretty standard old person gab. We also stopped in a mining town the night before we pulled into Perth, this town call Kalgoorlie which is the 5th largest town in all of Western Australia with a population of roughly 30,000. I’m told they have a huge open pit gold mine called the “Super Pit” which is 2.2 miles long by 1 mile wide. They also I am told have legal prostitution and a street you can walk where the woman stand in the door ways or windows or something like that. I went for a walk to find something to eat and was join by the guy who sat a seat behind me who looked like an Australian version of a young Bob Dylan with the Afro and black wool coat, give him sunglasses and a guitar and he would have won any look-a-like contest in the world. He turn out also won the title for most socially awkward Australian Bob Dylan as holding a conversation with him was like pulling teeth, he was very quiet and very nerdy it turned out. Either way we found an ok pizza place and had a meal. Then got back on to the train where on of the elderly contention decided to step off the train for a smoke at the ripe old age 120 and missed her step even though someone was assisting her over the gap in the platform and fell between the train and station platform resulting in a not to serious scrapped knee. She was then taken by ambulance to the hospital where it was agreed she would spend the night and take the morning train. Did I forget to mention that the paramedics were being filmed for what I can only hope was Western Australia’s very boring version of mining town “Cops”. After that was all sorted out we got the train rolling for the last over night journey to Perth.
It was amazing to see the landscape change over the entire journey from Metropolis into farmland, rolling hills, 6000 ft mountains back to rolling country side with sheep grazing everywhere then into fertile farm land full of crops and sheep then slowly into scrubby forest land then desert looking forests then straight desert scrub for 800 miles then back to scrubby forests and then farm land and finally back to suburban sprawl. I can also say that the twilight of Australia is like nothing I ever seen in 26 years. The sky turns from blue to deep blue into indigo and then fades to black from the deepest purple I have ever seen, if I tried a hundred years I don’t think I could describe it perfectly enough to do it justice.
The chance to experience Australia at a glance from a train was amazing, it was like reading the “Cliffs Notes” on Australian geography. I can’t really say that I would do it again however I would recommend it if you were ever given the opportunity to do it. But I am the type of person who can sit for hours on end and stare out a window, while trying to read a book or listening to music. Also much to my annoyance I did not see one wild kangaroo, camel (yes Camel) or Dingo. All though I was told they were out there.
Now I am in Perth staying with my very gracious friends Jesse and Dawn and their son Owen who have invited me to stay at their home for as long as I like. In Perth I will try to establish my self for a few months, work, play and explore as much of Western Australia as I can. My blog post will probably get a little less frequent but I will try to maintain regular entries. As always thank you for reading and scope out some photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/28522437@
My visiting friend Addie and I left Perth with a beautiful 3 hour drive down south, through farm country past rolling hills covered in yellow wild flowers shining in the sun. Every now and again passing all types of cows grazing lazily, sheep and goats milling about in the mid afternoon sun. We reached the town of Margaret River (M.R) had a nice stroll down the main street and popped in to some surf shops to scope things out (the main surf break is about 15 minutes from town.) M.R has a very artsy small town feel, many boutique shops, camping type stores and surf shops, seems an odd mix but there you have it. Australia. We then proceeded about another 30 minutes to Augusta which sits on Cape Leeuwin (pronounced Lewin), there they have a stunning white lighthouse which placed against the backdrop of the deep blues of the ocean makes for amazing photographs. Cape Leeuwin is the point where the Indian Ocean rounds Australia and meets the Southern Ocean (Antarctic). I of course had to slip off my sandals and have a bit of a walk in the Southern Ocean, I can now say that of the 5 major Oceans of the world I have had my feet in 4 of them. After roaming the lighthouse grounds we found a place to camp, a nice little “caravan park” which had tent campsites right on the other side of the dune from the Southern Ocean. We photographed the sunset made food and lit a camp fire (the most stubborn camp fire I have ever started in my life, took about 1.5 hours to get and stay lit.)
The nest morning we got a 10am start on the day, which encompassed packing up the gear and driving 30 minutes north with a quick stop off in M.R for food and a brekkie (Breakfast). We were on a mission to explore one of the many caves that over time have been eroded in to the limestone coastal landscape.We went to the Nigili Cave, where while waiting for a guide to lead use in to the cave I discovered while sitting on a bench that a 3.5 to 4” spider had placed him self on my chest, just about where you would place you hand for the national anthem (American). See photo. I quickly jumped up and flung him from my person and then as any good photographer would do, I photographed him or her. Come to find out that of all the poisonous insect in Australia this was not one of them. Wildlife seemed to be the theme of the day, after the cave exploration we were driving along the coastal road to the other tip of the cape where another lighthouse stands when we noticed that the under growth of the forest and randomly sprouting in fields were clusters of Calla Lilies, thousands of them, everywhere, We decided to drive down one of the roads that leads to a look out over the ocean to take pictures of the lilies. After we grabbed a few shots we proceeded to the lookout where we saw in the ocean below a pod of 8-12 dolphins, eating and playing in the waves right below us. After about 40 minutes of watching and photographing the dolphins we moseyed on to the Naturaliste Lighthouse on Cape Naturaliste. At this lighthouse we went up to the top with a guide who had a pair of binoculars and told us if we looked out over the cape we might see whales, well we did and when it was my turn to look at the whales I saw one breach out of the water slap it’s tail and then surface while splashing it’s fins in a waving motion. I am not kidding. After trying to get some whale shots we left and found our way to the main surfing area, we camped at another park to wake up and try and surf the next day.
