Journey To The Centre Of Red Earth
Sun Herald
Sunday February 6, 2000
THE Ghan is a 1,550km stretch of railroad track between Adelaide and Alice Springs. By the time I finished my trip, a comfortable way to see the notoriously harsh interior of the continent, and inspected my destination, I'd made two life decisions in the 19 hours of the ride.
The first came just a few hours out of the station in Adelaide. Gradually the foliage fell away, the horizon flattened and the size and starkness of the Australian outback became clear.
Somewhere between Mallala and Coonamia, I mentioned to a fellow passenger that it looked mighty flat out there. ``Gets flatter," she said.
And so it seemed. Mile after mile, we squinted at red earth and deep blue sky, the occasional acacia tree stitching the two together like panels on a vast two-hue quilt. In all future travel articles, I vowed, I would stop using the words ``epic" and ``barren" so lightly.
I saw the train ride as a chance to see the centre of Australia insulated from the elements.
The train leaves Adelaide at 3pm Mondays and Thursdays. Visitors can also board in Melbourne on Wednesdays, then roll over 36 hours via Adelaide to Alice Springs.
Early last year, mindful of the Olympics and their impending tourist boom, the train's operators, Great Southern Railway, added a weekly Sydney train. It leaves Sydney on Sundays, taking 45 hours.
In Adelaide, the train doors opened, conductors hollered, a few dozen backpackers lurched towards the cheap seats and I went looking for my compartment.
The train operates on a strict class system. In first class you get a sleeper compartment. It includes a foldaway toilet and washbasin and all meals in a dining car sequestered from the lower classes. The adult fare is $377 between Adelaide and Alice Springs.
In ``holiday" class you get a sleeper compartment for $246 (toilets down the hall) and pay extra for meals from Cafe Matilda. And in coach class you get a reclining seat for $120 and pay extra for meals from Cafe Matilda. (These prices are in effect until March 31.)
After dropping my bag in an ingeniously adaptable one-man compartment, I headed for the lounge car.
By dinner time I was able to shift my gaze from the landscape and focus on the white tablecloth, where, improbably and impeccably, a waiter soon placed pumpkin and crab meat soup. Then caesar salad. Then (vegetarians, turn away) kangaroo steak. The steak was gamy but good. All the meals and service on the train were good.
Soon after dinner, with the sun dipping low, passengers spotted a creature hopping about on the plains. Then another and another. Five kangaroos. Each halted on two legs to regard us as we rumbled past.
It was 10am when we reached Alice Springs. That morning there had been camel and dingo sightings and the appearance of the Macdonnell Ranges, the mountains that run west from Alice Springs.
I didn't have much time in Alice Springs - just a night at the cool, comfortable Alice Springs Resort and a flight out to Ayers Rock the next day - but I wanted to see what I could. In a rental car, I zipped past the dry Todd River, which early each autumn is home of the much-celebrated Henley-on-Todd Regatta. For the occasion, scores of Alice residents create colourful, bottomless ersatz boats that ``sail" on wheels or feet across the sand. There's no water at this regatta, but I understand there's plenty of beer.
From the riverside, I headed out on Larapinta Drive, first to the Alice Springs Desert Park, a collection of flora and fauna that opened in 1997 with more than 320 plant species and 120 animal species; it deserved more time than I had to give it. Beyond it, strung along Namatjira Drive over 45km or so, lay a handful of slightly wilder sites at the edge of the west Macdonnell Ranges.
I nosed around town a little, too. There I found a handful of museums, the 1909 jail, the headquarters of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and a handful of other well-baked buildings from early in the 20th century.
I had a ``creative native Australian" dinner at the Red Ochre Grill (fillet of popular barramundi) on Todd Mall; an atmospheric after-dinner Australian lager (Hahn Premium) at Scotty's Tavern, where the walls were lined with grainy photos of pioneers from decades past and four tables were each occupied by a single sullen man; and a good night's sleep at the Alice Springs Resort.
If I had the trip to do again, I might begin in Sydney or Melbourne - more varied coastal landscape to start with - and I might make the 430km trip from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock by car instead of plane, with a few days added for hiking, maybe even sleeping out. That way I'd be drawing steadily closer to that red earth.
© 2000 Sun Herald