There are four train services run by Great Southern Rail, and only three of them were covered by my rail pass – those three being the Indian Pacific (Perth – Kalgoorlie – Adelaide – Sydney), the Ghan (Adelaide – Alice Springs – Darwin) and the Overland (Adelaide – Melbourne). There is another mysterious service mentioned on their literature, though, the Southern Spirit (Brisbane – Sydney – Melbourne – Adelaide – Alice Springs). I had often wondered about that one, and why I couldn’t get on one of those trains. Then I found out the answer – it’s a new service aimed at the discerning traveller, and it is basically a horrendously expensive luxury rail tour which takes at least two weeks. On top of that, it only seems to run about twice a year. It doesn’t even have the Red carriages that plebs like me use.
A word about the rail pass, for anyone who’s interested – in theory, it’s great. In practice, not so much. Train journeys must be booked in advance, and if you’re not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow then this isn’t ideal. Nothing that a bit of forward planning can’t sort out, mind you, but then when you do try to book them a long time in advance, you might come up against a hurdle which isn’t mentioned in the brochure…
I had phoned Great Southern Rail from the car park at the “Twelve” Apostles to book a seat from Melbourne to Adelaide and thence Adelaide to Sydney. (You have to carefully time your phone calls to coincide with Adelaide office hours, not ideal on a continent with at least three different time zones.) I was told that there were seats available on both trains, and then during the conversation the helpful lady said “oh, is it a Rail Explorer pass you have? I’m sorry, that train is fully booked.” I guess that only a certain number of seats on each train are allocated to people with rail passes, then.
There are, of course, many advantages to this method of travel across Australia. Train journeys are great, and looking out of the window at the vast expanses of incredibly varied countryside (and wildlife) never gets dull. On the other hand, you have to contend with the choice of information and music that is piped into the carriage against your will. Inbetween jaw-droppingly awful selections of wailing whiny pop music and Australian country ‘n’ western music (if you’ve never heard it, it manages to be even worse than it sounds like it would be) are interviews with ordinary Australians about life in different places.
The music is too loud – although nothing that some good earphones and carefully-chosen angry shouty music can’t fix – and the information segments are too quiet. On my final Indian Pacific segment from Adelaide to Sydney, I was sitting directly underneat the loudspeaker, and could just about hear it. I got up to get a cup of water from the dispenser about two metres away from where I was sitting, and I coudn’t hear it anymore.
Anyway, I got the Overland from Melbourne to Adelaide, and stayed there one final night. Annie’s Place in Adelaide gave me flashbacks by playing the same music that Annie’s Place in Alice Springs had on repeat in the bar – some sort of Starbucks-endorsed acoustic compilation abomination, I think. At least one of the girls working in the Alice Springs branch hijacked the music and put on some decent stuff at any available opportunity.
The final leg of the great train journey was Adelaide to Sydney, meaning that the only part I missed was Alice Springs – Darwin on the Ghan (and that was only because the train tracks were washed away by the floods). It stopped at Broken Hill for a couple of hours, allowing passengers to wander around the town. Unfortunately it was Good Friday, so almost everything was closed. At least there were some intriguing street names (Bromide Street, Sulphide Street, Oxide Street) and an incongruous memorial to the band on the Titanic which was apparently erected because of the town’s links with… er… music. Or something. Also, Subway was open so I was able to have some food that was better than the indigestion-inducing microwaved snacks that pass for “food” on the train.
I also had a chance to overhear a conversation between two Australians who were sitting behind me. Well, I say “had a chance”, I really mean “had no choice”. The older one with no teeth discussed his legal woes, which stemmed from renting a room in the house of someone who was taking videos of the bedroom this bloke and his missus were using. In retaliation, he stole a lot of this bloke’s stuff and sold it at Cash Converters. Unfortunately for him, he also made hundreds of threatening phone calls to the guy’s answering machine, which were then reported to the police. He got probation and community service, the terms of both of which he subsequently broke, but confidently asserted that since he hadn’t been back in 10 years then it should be OK by now.
His incredibly camp young hippy friend (dreadlocks, of course) sympathised with his plight inbetween musing on the best way to separate the codeine from paracetamol in co-codamol tablets, and “thinking you could dose someone’s contact lenses with acid without them knowing”. The older guy talked about his woes about having his doctor cut off his supply of dihydrocodeine because he was selling them, and that he could have continued to get them had he got them daily and supervised in a pharmacy. Ah, it’s just like being back in Dundee.
I was also spoken at by a self-professed street performer, who was wandering around the dining car speaking to anyone who would listen – or, in my case, clearly didn’t want to. He told me about his Scottish friend who is also a street performer, and has a skit where he counts in different languages. When he gets to Scotland, he goes “one… two… FREEDOM!”
“Hilarious,” I said.
“Really?” the street performer replied.
“No,” I clarified. I’m not sure if it was this or the “keep talking to me and I will kill you” stare I was giving him that compelled him to bugger off shortly after this exchange. He tapped me on the arm and tried to talk to me the next day while I was buying breakfast, for all the world as if I was his best friend. I just ignored him.
The train wound its way through the Blue Mountains, treating us to some amazing morning views through the windows, and then to Sydney. For the first time since leaving the UK, I was staying in a place I’d been to before – in actual fact, staying in the same hostel. It hasn’t changed at all, although it seems smaller. On the Saturday night I met up with a few folk who post on the b3ta messageboard from Australia (hello gronkpan, k3b/-\b and Colonel Boris), and went to a Korean barbecue place for dinner. And then prepared for the longest day of travelling so far…
Monday the 5th of April started early, I got up and got the train to the airport (there is a shuttle bus which is slightly cheaper, but probably a less pleasant journey). My connecting flight to Buenos Aires was delayed by over an hour, but this didn’t worry me too much – mainly because the next flight to Lima left eight hours after I was due to arrive in Argentina.
Thanks to the international date line, I was due to take off at 10:30am, fly for over 13 hours and then land at 10:50am the same day. In that 20 minutes, I managed to get a small amount of sleep and watch three and a half films: Avatar (I failed to see it in 3D, and decided to watch it on the tiny screen to see if it’s as amazing as people say it is without the 3D effects. Verdict: impressive, but James Cameron really should let someone else polish his scripts); The Men Who Stare At Goats (amusing, and thank goodness Ewan McGregor didn’t try to imitate Jon Ronson’s voice); Inglourious Basterds (which I’d seen before, but just wanted to see the “bongiorno” scene again); and The Hurt Locker (which I didn’t see all of because it was time to land, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Avatar).
I then spent eight hours wandering around Buenos Aires airport, trying to stay awake. On arrival, I had to give my details and baggage claim number to a representative of Lan Chile, despite my luggage already having been checked through to Lima. This was so they could make sure they got it. Despite this less-than-confidence-inspiring requirement, my bag did indeed arrive in Lima on the same flight as me. Then the next potential hurdle had to be averted – the Quantas woman in Sydney had told me that if I didn’t already have a flight ticket from Peru then I’d have to buy one on the spot or be deported immediately. I’m flying from Brazil, not Peru. She said that should probably be OK then. She was talking out of her arse, there was no problem. Anyway, I had recently read about the amount of money the country lost every day while Machu Picchu was closed, so they’re hardly going to want to get rid of tourists before they’ve had a chance to spend any money.
I’ve just worked out that (apart from a couple of brief naps on the planes, which can’t have amounted to more than an hour or two) I was awake for about 33 hours yesterday. No wonder I’m tired.
