The Indian Pacific: A Cross-Continental Train Adventure

Do you remember the evolution of a tantrum from when you were a kid? Where "I won't do it" quickly becomes "I can't do it" and horrendous sobs over the injustice of it all result from being forced? That's how I felt about the smelly guy who took the seat next to me at the Adelaide stop. He didn't simply reek, oh no! He exuded the nearly-tangible odor of the bog of eternal stench or the three mouths of Cerberus, hell hound - it was bad. I started developing complex schemes to escape the night: sleeping in the showers, staying up, pretending to read in the lounge car, etc. It was horrible! And no one understood except for those tiny violin players; thanks, guys, wherever you are!

Melodrama aside, train travel wasn't so bad. There's a lot more space to move around in than a plane, but that freedom is paid for by the slowness of the journey. My red service seat (coach) allowed access to 2 other cars: the dining car and the lounge. The dining car was a time-warped 1950's ice cream parlour complete with intense lighting, metal-trimmed tables, and rigid plastic booth seats. The lounge had a couple arcade games and several coaches so soft they bottomed out not matter how light the sitter was. The main source of entertainment came through the large windows. At times, the train would stop with no apparent reason (in that it was very like Denver traffic); we actually were letting other trains by. The Indian Pacific is a single rail line cutting across the Australian continent from Sydney to Perth, with a brief detour in Adelaide. The line was extended out to Perth as part of the deal to make Western Australia a province of the country; it was the first, and remains the only, transcontinental railway in Australia.

The land melts from city to suburb to dairy farms to bush to proper outback country. What's the difference between the bush and the outback? As far as I can tell it's a matter of life. The bush still has trees and kangaroos while the outback has no life other than the half-dead bushes and a few humans: the only creatures stupid enough to live out there!

Our first whistle-stop was at Broken Hill, also known as Silver City. Broken Hill is a true mining town: all of the streets are named after mineral, unions are alive and well, and the mines still operate. The town has served as backdrop for several fabulous films: Dirty Deeds, the Mad Max movies, and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. Yet, despite all this glamour, it is a town coming to the end of its life. In 2001, when mining was slow, the council made a decision to prevent Broken Hill from fading into a ghost town: the entire town would become a "living museum." Old buildings were restored, porch roofs were re-attached to shops, and tours began. Call me a pessimist, but this plan seems flawed. A living museum? Museums are, by nature, dead; completely focused on preserving the past, they have no future. Broken Hill still cannot offer jobs to its children and so they leave. The community simply gets older, and no matter how they cling to the past, there is no stopping that.

The second full day on the train took us through the Nullarbor Plains; Nullarbor is from the Latin for "no trees." An apt name. The plains sit on a giant slab of limestone 30m deep and as vast as the plains themselves! The layer was formed by this section of land submerging and emerging from the Indian Ocean tens of thousands of years ago. The land is so desolate that bushes break the horizon instead of trees; it is flatter than Kansas, with the burnt-orange soil peppered by tiny blue-grass bushes and rocks. The clouds lounged lazily on the horizon - close enough to poke if you had the gusto to get there. As I mentioned before, only humans are crazy enough to live out there, and I met a few at the next whistle-stop in Cook.

Cook was an interesting little town. There was no official tour, probably because the town could be fully explored in the 30 minutes it took to refuel. Cook was once a boom town, but those days have long passed and now it is a simple refueling stop. This self-proclaimed ghost town sits in the center of the Nullarbor Plains. There is no directionality possible there without referencing the train tracks of the only street sign in town: pointing west to Perth and east to Sydney. What residents do remain seem to take their isolation and degeneration with an Aussie sense of humor: the town is decorated with aging signs carrying catchy phrases. "Save our hospital: get sick." "If you're a crook, come to Cook!"

There actually are some trees in Cook thanks to 6 men called "the men of the trees." A few years back, these men from Adelaide and Perth brought 600 trees to Cook to begin the "re-greening of Australia." Most have died since, but a few remain to offer a welcome counterpart to the surrounding plains.

Back on the train I listed to audiobooks and watched the barren sprawl. The motion was hypnotic, and even when we stopped I thought us still in motion; my eyes carried on travelling whether or not the train cooperated. As we moved back into the bush, the sun seemed to set with supernatural speed and cast purple shadows over the ground and trees. Our last whistle-stop was in Kalgoorlie for 3 hours. Two Singaporeans, Two Swiss men, and I attempted to romp around the town for awhile; it's not easy to romp in freezing temperatures when all the shops are closed! The best part of Kalgoorlie besides trying to pronounce the name correctly? Sitting on the lap of a man statue/drinking fountain named Paddy Hannan. Thanks for the drink, Paddy!

The smelly guy took pity on me and slept in the lounge car on our last night - I think I might have kicked him, ENTIRELY BY ACCIDENT...but a lot, the night before. Mwahaha! When I woke up the world was covered in fog but I could make out trees and rivers and green grasses. We had made it to Perth!