End of the never-never line

By KATHY MARKS

In The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin's semi-fictional travelogue about the invisible paths at the core of the Aboriginal creation myth, his narrator encounters a Russian-born Australian mapping sacred "dreaming" sites to protect them from a railway destined to span the heart of the country.

Chatwin met an anthropologist carrying out this work in the mid-1980s when he travelled through the red desert of central Australia to research his book. In a landscape where hills, creeks, rocks and even a single paperbark tree can have spiritual significance, it was a gargantuan task - and not one usually faced by the hard-headed businessmen and civil engineers who plan major projects.

Twenty years later, the 2979km railway is nearly complete. The line, which links the nation's southern cities with Darwin, is the fulfilment of a grand vision first articulated more than a century ago. It is also testament to an unprecedented level of co-operation between the people building it and the Aboriginal custodians of the land through which it runs.

The challenge of opening up the continent's vast, inhospitable interior has transfixed European settlers since the earliest days. In 1862, John McDouall Stuart pioneered a historic route from south to north that was subsequently followed by Afghan cameleers. Not long after came the railway, but it was not until 1929 that it reached the dusty settlement of Alice Springs. And there it stopped - halted by the Great Depression, a world war and the cowardice of successive prime ministers who promised to extend it to Darwin and end the Northern Territory's isolation.

So repeatedly were Territorians' hopes raised and dashed during the 20th century that it came to be known as the "never-never line".

Now it is about to become reality. For two years, construction gangs have battled their way across some of the harshest terrain on earth, laying track at a rate of 4.2km a day. Heading north and south in two teams, they are 115km from Darwin and 85km from Alice Springs. In January, the first freight train will set off on the inaugural journey from Adelaide; in February, it will be followed by a trainload of excitable railway fanatics who have paid up to A$12,000 ($13,500) each to travel on the first passenger service, the Ghan.

The 47-hour trip on the Ghan is set to become one of the world's legendary train rides, while the freight service will transform the way Australia trades with its Asian neighbours.

In the Northern Territory, and further afield, there is a palpable thrill in the air, for this is a grandiose infrastructure scheme on a scale rarely seen since the 19th century - and it will probably be the last great transcontinental railway to be built.

That sense of history imbues those working on the Alice to Darwin line.

Rolf Schaefer came out of semi-retirement to make concrete sleepers at a factory in Tennant Creek, a rough-edged former gold-mining town on the edge of the Tanami Desert. A gruff 54-year-old, he says the money is "not real great for the work". But he adds: "It's something else to be part of the railway. I saw the first sleeper made here, and I'll see the last one."

The factory will provide half of the two million sleepers required for the 1420km of new track; the others are being made in Katherine, 664km up the Stuart Highway. Every night, a train leaves Tennant and Katherine, laden with rail, freshly cast sleepers and 4000 tonnes of ballast, arriving at the two track-laying sites in time for the morning shift.

There is no progress without sacrifice, and some workers on the A$1.4bn project have not been home for 18 months. They work six weeks on, one week off and live in remote camps strung out along the route. The camps, a collection of temporary huts, have pool tables, satellite television and a bar. There is, however, little time for leisure.

Such is the itinerant nature of working life in the Outback, and some accept it without complaint. Robyn Simmonds, a cheerful, middle-aged woman who serves up huge breakfasts in the Tennant Creek camp, travels around the country as work dictates. Her next job is at a zinc refinery in Queensland.


"You can get a ratbag culture with so many men living together, but it hasn't been too bad here," she says. "The blokes don't want for much; in fact, they complain to me about putting on weight."

Others find the lifestyle tough, and not just those at the coalface.

Home for Shane Beitzel, the manager of the sleeper factory, is Townsville, on the Queensland coast. He misses the sea and finds Tennant - a community of 4000 people and few facilities - desperately isolated.

"Your whole world is two minutes in one direction and two minutes in the other, then nothing for 4 1/2 hours," Beitzel says, gesturing up and down the Stuart Highway.

That day, the factory had cast its millionth sleeper. Was the occasion celebrated with champagne? Beitzel shakes his head wearily. "A sleeper is a sleeper is a sleeper," he says. "It's just one sleeper closer to getting out of here."

Out in the field, conditions are unforgiving. The men who have built 90 bridges and made 1500 culverts have to contend with daytime temperatures of up to 50C. In summer, track-laying started at 2am because the machinery became impossibly hot during the day. In the wet season, the northern crew downed tools for three months because their labours would have been washed away by torrential downpours. All year round, the dust is oppressive. It gets up the nose, in the ears, lies thick upon the tongue.

Yet the men laying steel across the Outback have it easy. Their predecessors who built the line to Alice had to construct bridges and blast tunnels by hand. Sleepers were hammered into place and the rails bolted on. Termites ate the wooden sleepers.

Nowadays, a track-laying machine drops seven sleepers a minute on to the red earth. Mechanised claws nudge them into position, 720mm apart. Rail is fed on to the sleepers and welded by use of small mobile furnaces that heat it to 2000C. The result is one seamless length of rail - meaning that the romantic "clickety-clack" associated with train travel has vanished.

The railway runs across a diverse landscape - desert, mangroves, rocky outcrops, streams and flood plains - and much of it is Aboriginal-owned. Hence the long, intricate negotiations to lease land and preserve sacred sites, which in the Northern Territory are protected by law.

Every site was debated with the traditional owners. The discussions were all resolved more or less harmoniously - to the relief of ADrail, the company that is building the line, since an argument about one tree could have held up the entire project.

The landscape is central to Aborigines' 40,000-year-old culture, and many natural features are significant in stories about the ancestors who created the land.

Andrew Allan, the regional manager for the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, says consultations yielded a route with the least impact on sacred sites.

"It was not always possible to avoid them," he says. "In some cases, custodians gave permission for them to be removed." In other cases, a site could be protected - by routing the line over an important hill rather than straight through it, for instance.

Efforts have been made to give the Northern Territory's large Aboriginal population a stake in the railway. The territory's government paid A$8.4m for the right to lay tracks across Aboriginal land. Indigenous groups also received an A$5m equity share in the line. Contractors committed themselves to employing and training Aboriginal people along the route.

As always, the reality does not quite match up. Forty per cent of the original workforce at the Tennant Creek factory was indigenous, but the figure has dropped to 25 per cent.

"Once they've earned a few hundred dollars - a bit of money for food and alcohol - they take off," Beitzel says. He quickly adds: "Of course, the young white blokes are just as bad."

For locals such as Toby Brody, an elder of the Warumungu people, the railway has been a long time coming.

"I've been hearing about it since I was a little boy," he says. "I remember my mother talking about it in the 70s, or even before."

There is a hill that is sacred to the Warumungu just 100m from the factory. "It's okay," says Brody. "We think that the railway is a good thing."

For the communities along the route, the new line will bring varying benefits. Darwin hopes to become a regional trading hub, linking the agricultural and industrial heartlands of southern Australia with the vast markets of Asia. The city, which is closer to Singapore and Jakarta than to Sydney and Melbourne, is upgrading its port and building a new business park. The line will also connect Darwin with the rest of Australia. A daily 1.8km-long train will handle domestic freight, transporting goods that were previously carried to and from the Northern Territory in enormous triple-lorry road trains.

The weekly Ghan is expected to boost tourism, but not everyone will reap the rewards. While the train will stop for hours in Alice and Katherine, giving passengers time to visit landmarks such as Katherine Gorge, it will arrive in Tennant Creek at 1am and spend just 20 minutes there. Anyone who gets off will have to wait for the next service, and - apart from a new Aboriginal cultural centre - Tennant has few attractions.

"You wouldn't want to spend a week here," says Paul Ruger, the mayor.

Tennant may profit in other ways, though: a new mine is to be opened up at Banka Banka, 100km to the north, as a result of cheaper freight costs. Other mining ventures are planned.

Perhaps the wisest words on this subject were spoken by an elderly man in Tennant Creek. Reflecting on the excitement surrounding the new railway, he said: "They've had the camel trains. They've had the road trains. Now they're having the rail trains. I don't know what all the fuss is about."


- INDEPENDENT