The Indian Pacific train journey spans 2700 miles from Sydney to Perth, crossing Australia's interior. Photo / Supplied
Journey across the breadth of Australia from coast to coast and discover the stark, wild beauty of the country’s hidden interior.
Beyond my window, Earth has lost its features. There are no gentle undulations of terrain. No roads or fences or distant stands of trees bending in a far-off breeze. There is nothing but red soil stubbled with scrub, a horizon that could have been scored along a laser level and a blue sky. The land is so flat it creates an optical illusion, making the vast distances seem oddly truncated. The furthest reaches of my vision appear almost close enough to touch. I feel certain I can see the curvature of the planet.
I’m aboard the Indian Pacific, a railway that crosses the breadth of the Australian continent from, you guessed it, the edge of the Indian Ocean on one side to the Pacific on the other. In a three-night luxury sprint, it covers 2700 miles (4345km) between Sydney in the east and Perth in the west, across some of the country’s most inhospitable terrain.
Inhospitable is not how I’d describe the start of my journey though, at Sydney’s Central Station. The grand sandstone building looked almost golden in the sunshine, and it buzzed with commuters and chattering day-trippers. There on platform one, humming gently as if in anticipation of the grand journey ahead, was the Indian Pacific – a 2300-foot (711m) streak of steel, with 25 carriages and a sturdy blue locomotive.
I stepped aboard and happily explored my single bunk cabin – opening and closing tiny cupboards and marvelling at how an en-suite bathroom can be squeezed into a space the size of a phone box – when a shrill whistle sounded. The train lurched forward. We were on our way.
Sydney’s high-rise buildings flashed past the windows, followed by suburban streets lined with squat bungalows. Somewhere, without me noticing the transition, we entered a different landscape – what Australians call ‘the bush’, an all-purpose term used to describe areas beyond the urban fringes. Through my window were speed-blurred swathes of eucalypts and colourful bursts of bright yellow wattle and fire-hued banksia.
The route led us up through the Blue Mountains, so named for the vapour that rises when the oil of its countless eucalypts evaporates in the hot sun, forming a bluish mist. Then it was down, into the rolling green farmland of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s food bowl – evident from the distant hills lined with orderly rows of fruit trees and the vast fields of wheat and barley waving as we passed.
No doubt some of this produce was served in the Queen Adelaide dining car, a comforting, wood-panelled space of brown leather, brass fittings and white linen. There were canapés of curry puffs scented with native lemon myrtle. Saltwater barramundi, and tender beef from the fields of the Hunter Valley. Plates of seared kangaroo fillet and ravioli stuffed with Hervey Bay scallops. And to drink, a generous list of wines from across the railway’s path – from a deeply fruity Barossa Valley shiraz to a citrusy Margaret River sauvignon blanc.
Such luxury on the rails must have been impossible to imagine for those who first dreamed of a cross-continental Australian railway. Work began to unite the east and west coasts in 1912, just a few years after the country’s federation. Yet the extraordinary challenges of building a line across mountains, arid deserts and extremely remote topography meant it was nearly six decades later, in 1970, that the first coast-to-coast rail journey took place.
Some of the views may have changed since, but when we left the built-up areas behind after the South Australian capital Adelaide, only the stark, timeless land of the outback stretched ahead of us.
Which brings me to my present view, and that exceptionally barren expanse outside my window. We’re crossing the Nullarbor Plain, a prehistoric seabed of solid limestone stretching over 100,000 sq miles (260,000 sq km) and littered with fossils of ancient marine creatures. The name is Latin – literally, ‘no trees plain’. But before anyone who spoke Latin stepped a foot on this land, it had another name – Oondoori, meaning ‘waterless’.Onwards along tracks straight as pins. The Nullarbor is home to the longest stretch of undeviating trainline in the world – 297 miles (477km) of it – a feat made possible only because there are no geographical features to avoid.
An apple-cheeked train manager bustles by in a high-vis vest and notices me staring out in slack-jawed wonder. It’s not always the same, she tells me. Sometimes there are wildflowers. Birds and animals crowding around scarce water sources. Dust storms so thick you can barely see. Rains so heavy it floods the tracks. ‘I love the Nullarbor’, she says, ‘because I know every time I come, it’s going to be different.’
Signs of civilisation appear at Cook, a near-ghost town in the eastern Nullarbor, and again at Rawlinna, which is little more than a pub by the tracks where jackaroos and jillaroos (cattle handlers) gather from far-flung cattle stations. I become so accustomed to the desert, plain and scrubland that it’s a shock when the trees – purple-blossomed jacarandas – return. Then forests as we roll into the Avon River Valley. Houses, which have been so rare for the past two days, appear more frequently, until they merge into a suburban blur on the outskirts of Perth.
After four days and thousands of miles, we come to a gentle stop at East Perth Railway Station. I’m back in the world again, amid the skyscrapers and manicured parks of Perth.
Suddenly my epic cross-continental journey feels like a dream of another world. One of raw nature, red dust, limitless expanses and a distant horizon I can almost reach out and touch with a fingertip.
Start/Finish: Sydney/Perth
Distance: 2704 miles (4352km)
Duration: 65hr
Ticket types: Tickets on the Indian Pacific are all-inclusive, covering cabin accommodation, meals, drinks and off-train excursions such as stargazing and vineyard dining. You have a choice between Gold Service, with single or twin bunk cabin and small private bathroom, and the more expensive Platinum Service, with a spacious double cabin, full-size en suite, views from both sides of the train and access to the exclusive Platinum club dining carriage.
How to book: Visit journeybeyondrail.com.
More info: For things to do before and after your train journey, check out sydney.com and visitperth.com.
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Reproduced with permission from Lonely Planet © 2025.