On the right track

Forget the Orient Express. NICK SQUIRES reports that two of the world's greatest railway journeys lie just across the Tasman

No one could accuse the Australians of being hasty in building a rail link to connect the country from north to south.

The idea of a north-south railway between Adelaide and Darwin was first suggested in 1859.

Exactly 70 years later it reached Alice Springs, in the arid red heart of the continent. And there it stopped.

Bickering between the states, lack of political will and the increasing importance of road travel left the dream of a transcontinental ribbon of steel from the Southern Ocean to the Arafura Sea on permanent hold. Until now.

Last month, to great fanfare, the first freight and passenger trains to travel the new line rolled into Darwin.

In true Aussie fashion, they were greeted by bare bottoms and flashing breasts. The mass moon organised by locals to celebrate the train's arrival rather overshadowed the official welcoming reception.

"There were about 60 of them all lined up," a local photographer, Clive Hyde, explains. "That's the Outback for you - you're pretty much free to do what you want."

The bare bums and brass bands have gone, but the excitement of the world's newest long-distance train journey remains.

"The reception to the new Ghan has exceeded all our expectations," says Andrew Scott, business development manager for Great Southern Railways, which runs the route.

"You won't get on the northbound train this side of July. We've had people making enquiries about 2005 and 2006."

For those lucky enough to get a ticket the Ghan leaves Adelaide's Keswick Station each Sunday at 5pm.

For the first few hours of its journey, the train traces the route of its cousin, the Indian Pacific, rumbling through pale wheat country towards Port Augusta, at the top of Spencer Gulf.

Sometime during the night, when most passengers are tucking themselves into their berths for the first time, it hits the tiny siding of Tarcoola.

There it swings north into increasingly arid scrub country, passing geographical features which few Australians have ever heard of, let alone foreigners: Marla, the Everard Ranges, the Pedirka Desert.

As the mulga trees and spinifex flash by, it is easy for modern-day travellers to lapse into a delicious sense of torpor: the only decisions you have to make are whether to read a book, have a drink at the bar (which opens at the dangerously early hour of 10am) or simply gaze out of the window.

Alternatively you can check out the ingeniously designed Gold Kangaroo sleeper cabin - the most luxurious of the train's three accommodation options - to find all its clever features.

During the day the two single bunk beds fold up to form a couch, and there are tiny cupboards in which to hang your clothes. Best of all is the bathroom, which is about the size of a telephone box. The loo is hidden beneath the sink, which in turn slots neatly into a hole in the wall.

The contrast with the cool, air-conditioned comfort of the carriages and the searing heat of the desert could hardly be greater.

But the parched landscape is well worth watching for the sightings of magnificent wedge-tailed eagles, disdainful emus and herds of wild camels grazing on the ubiquitous salt bush which covers the ground like stubble.

The Ghan takes its name from the Afghan camel handlers who were brought to Australia in the 19th century to help to open up the interior to prospectors, explorers and pioneer pastoralists.

With the advent of the motor car and railways the camels were no longer needed and were set free. Today there are around half a million dromedaries quietly munching their way across the Outback - the world's only truly wild population.

The Ghan clanks to a halt in Alice Springs at midday on day two with the four-hour stop-off in the Alice providing a chance to visit attractions such as the award-winning Desert Wildlife Park on the outskirts of town.

If you want an indication of what it's like in the landscape you've just been zooming past in air-conditioned comfort this is the place to do it.

In temperatures often in excess of 40C gravel paths meander through three of the main habitats found in the Red Centre - desert rivers, sand country and woodland - and their wildlife.

Species on display range from tiny, chattering zebra finches and budgerigars, to the rare quoll, a cat-like marsupial which is now endangered in the wild, and from cuddly brush-tailed bettongs to deadly desert death adders.

You can walk among emus, wallabies and red kangaroos - the world's largest marsupial - and see endangered stick-nest rats, numbats and mulgaras.

The park is living proof that the Red Centre is not as barren or lifeless as it looks.

From Alice Springs the train resumes its journey, travelling through classic desert country. The rugged ridges of the MacDonnell ranges retreated into the distance to be replaced by red sandy plains studded with termite mounds and ghost gums.

As the last rays of the sun paint the sky with streaks of pink, blue and gold, it is time to head for the dining car with its appetising aromas of red lentil and coconut soup, saltwater barramundi with lime aioli and beef fillet with native pepper hollandaise.

The morning of day three finds the train in the town of Katherine, where there is an opportunity to take a croc-spotting boat cruise along the stunningly beautiful Katherine Gorge (now known more correctly by its Aboriginal name, Nitmiluk).

For the seriously cashed-up traveller, the sandstone escarpments and inky-blue waters of the gorge can be viewed from a helicopter.

By now the train is in the Top End and before long desert scrub is replaced by lush green tropical savannah, looking limp in the extreme humidity.

Finally, nearly 50 hours and two nights after leaving Adelaide, it pulls into Darwin, its epic 2980km journey over.

Those who complete this odyssey have crossed some of the most inhospitable and sparsely populated places on the planet, on the last transcontinental railway ever to be built, enjoying great food, spectacular scenery and immense vistas along the way.

Sadly, latter-day travellers are unlikely to be met in Darwin by a 21-bum salute. But then you can't have everything.

Rarely has the phrase "in the middle of nowhere" been more apt than in the case of the tiny ghost town of Cook.

Named after a former Australian Prime Minister, it consists of a ramshackle collection of abandoned houses slap bang in the centre of the Nullarbor Plain, one of the loneliest and most forbidding places on earth.

Once a thriving township of 300 people working on the transcontinental railway stretching between Sydney and Perth, it now boasts a population of two: Jan Holberton and her husband Ivor.

"I miss having other women to talk to, and the hairdresser, but other than that I love it out here," said Jan, 57, as she surveyed the pancake-flat plains extending in every direction.

Old water tanks are decorated with colourful murals, there are piles of rusted vehicles and farm machinery everywhere, and the town's only swimming pool has long since been filled in with sand.

A shakily painted sign carries a warning which has long since lost its relevance: "Any arsehole that steals from this camp will be gut shot and left for the eagles to feed on."

"It's exciting living here," insists Jan, who along with, Ivor, 60, maintains an eclectic souvenir shop.

"You never know who's going to drop in by four-wheel-drive, and of course the train stops twice a week."

The train she is referring to is the Indian Pacific, one of the world's great rail journeys, a sort of desert equivalent of the Trans-Siberian Express.

Twice a week it leaves Sydney, on the shores of the Pacific, on a three-day, 4350km trek across the continent to Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

We begin the journey on a Wednesday afternoon by clanking slowly through Sydney's red-roofed outer suburbs, before crossing the deep canyons of the Blue Mountains, so named for the bluish, oily haze given off by vast eucalyptus forests.

As night falls and dinner is served on immaculate white table cloths in the Queen Adelaide restaurant carriage, the Indian Pacific slices its way across New South Wales before wheezing to a halt the next morning in the Outback mining town of Broken Hill.

There is time for a brief tour of the town's dusty mines, Victorian architecture and art galleries, before the train heads south-east to Adelaide in South Australia, famed for its Mediterranean climate and nearby vineyards - another chance to stretch the legs.

The train leaves Adelaide in the late afternoon of day two, passing huge fields of golden wheat as it trundles north towards the former railway town of Port Augusta, the gateway to the rugged Flinders Ranges.

It is on the Nullarbor that the true essence of the journey emerges, as the train forges its way, hour after hour, across the seemingly unending desert plain. It is there when I go to bed on Thursday night, and it is still there when I wake up on Friday morning.

It stretches for more than 1200km from South Australia deep into the heart of Western Australia. Nullarbor is not an Aboriginal word but comes from Latin and means treeless. This is the Australia of the popular imagination - hot, arid, unimaginably vast, and unchanged for millennia.

It is around here that the Indian Pacific embarks on the longest stretch of straight railway in the world - all 480km of it.

When the British explorer Edward Eyre became the first white man to cross the Nullarbor in 1841, he was forced to dig in the dunes for water, eat his own horse and endure blinding sand storms. It was, he said, "dreadful country, rocky, barren and scrubby".

We stop at Rawlinna, little more than a peeling station building, a grid of dusty tracks and a pair of 19th-century wooden prison cells.

It may not look much, but to Dennis Nash, 49, it is home.

Nash is a boundary rider on a sprawling, 1295ha cattle and sheep property. His job is to drive around the ranch, mending the wire fence which keeps out foxes, wild dogs and dingoes. "They are a real menace," he says, in a slow, Outback drawl. "We shoot them on sight."

When the stockmen and jackaroos of the Nullarbor have a few days off, they make a bolt for Kalgoorlie, the next stop on our transcontinental odyssey.

The historic gold mining town, which lies 595km east of Perth, is renowned for its Victorian architecture, the 283m-deep Super Pit and skimpy bars, rough and ready pubs in which the barmaids, or skimpies, wear tiny bikinis and see-through tops.

We arrive in Kalgoorlie on Friday night as a hot desert wind blows down the main street, its ornate buildings lending it the appearance of a frontier town in the Wild West.

There is time for a couple of beers in one of the less rowdy bars before climbing back on the train for the final run to Perth.

By the time I wake up on our last day, the desert has turned to farmland stocked with fat sheep. We rattle past fast-flowing rivers, thickly wooded ridges and farm houses surrounded by enormous gum trees.

Three hours later, we are in Perth, which unlike its Scottish namesake boasts year-round sunshine, gleaming skyscrapers and a squawking flocks of brightly-coloured parakeets.

We've made it ... though admittedly our crossing of the continent entailed no more physical effort than tottering from the lounge car to the dining carriage three times a day.

But there is still a real sense of achievement as I collect my bags and climb down from the train for the last time. For a true sense of Australia's immense size and harsh beauty, the Indian Pacific is hard to beat.

THE GHAN

Adelaide-Darwin or vice versa.

Trains depart from Adelaide on Sunday and Darwin on Wednesday.

ACCOMMODATION

In three classes: A$1740 ($1980) an adult in Gold Kangaroo sleeper cabin, A$1390 ($1580) in Red Kangaroo sleeper cabin, A$440 ($500) in a daynighter seat.

SIDE TRIPS

Alice Springs, Uluru (Ayers Rock), Coober Pedy and Katherine Gorge.

INDIAN PACIFIC

Sydney-Perth or vice versa. Trains depart Sydney Saturday and Wednesday, and Perth Wednesday and Sunday.

ACCOMMODATION

In three classes: A$1560 ($1775) an adult in Gold Kangaroo sleeper cabin, A$1250 ($1420) in Red Kangaroo sleeper cabin, A$513 ($583) in a daynighter reclining seat.

SIDE TRIPS

Mining capital Broken Hill, Adelaide, historic Cook on The Nullarbor and the gold-rush town of Kalgoorlie.