Susan Buckland: Whistle-stop on a marathon journey into railway history

More than a century after it was first dreamed of, the railway line to connect the bottom of Australia with the top has finally been completed. And I've been wondering if New Zealander Alistair Quest booked on to the inaugural train service from Adelaide to celebrate this tremendous feat of engineering.

Perhaps he boarded at the halfway point in Alice Springs, where the service used to terminate. Now, at a cost of about $1.5 billion, the line goes all the way to Darwin. Three thousand kilometres of track slicing from coast to coast across the continent.

Alistair is a rail buff. I met him in Australia's Top End, which is home for him these days. Actually, I heard Alistair before I met him. He piped me into the petite, but once important, railway station called Pine Creek. The whistle was a prized possession. Alistair had forged it from a "dog", a large railway bolt. And it doubled as his beer bottle opener.

Where Alistair goes the whistle usually goes, too. He once blew it at the Gold Coast Casino when he struck lucky. The authorities told him to pipe down and push off.

It's easier to stay on the right side of the law in a small place like Pine Creek. Indeed, whistle-blowing is part of Alistair's job. He is a volunteer at the 115-year-old Pine Creek railway station, which is now a National Trust Museum, and he explains exhibits such as the miner's "bush fridge" made from wood and sacking. And the whistles the workers used as a warning for when the ganger (boss) was coming.

Pine Creek might seem a pipsqueak place, but it was the site of a major gold rush in the 19th century. With many new mines opening in the 1880s, reliable transport between the gold fields and Darwin became necessary. Sailing ships landed tons of rails made by German steelworks. The labourers, most of them from Asia, slogged from dawn to dusk for three shillings and sixpence a day.

Pine Creek Railway Station opened on September 30, 1889 and chugged on until 1976. Small wonder that Alistair and other Top Enders were not prepared to leave this long-serving lynchpin to the fate of white ants and graffiti addicts. Since the old station got its new lease on life in 1987 as a National Trust Museum, Pine Creekers have been spurred on to put their town back on the map.

Alistair introduced me to the restored locomotive in the station. It provided Top End transport until 1945. Then it arrived in Pine Creek in the late 70s to be used in the film We of the Never Never - which, to Alistair's surprise, I had never heard of.

We got back on track when I said I would like to travel on the Ghan, the legendary train that travels from Adelaide and now continues its marathon journey to Darwin.

The Ghan was named in honour of the camels and their drivers who came from Afghanistan in the 19th century to carry supplies through the Australian Outback. Alistair would know all about the Afghan connection. And if he did book on to the Ghan to experience its historic transcontinental journey, surely this would have been an occasion to blow his whistle.