Indian Pacific

Having done a long distance train ride before I was really, really, really excited to be taking the Indian Pacific railway from Perth to Adelaide. The initial plan way back when had been to take the train in the reverse direction, east to west, from Sydney to Perth. But having spent some time on OzBUS talking to people who'd been to Australia before I'd come up with a different route that meant we take it west to east and only part of the way, which though a shame was good enough for me.

When we were booking our tickets we were torn about whether to stick to the cheapest option to reduce the impact on our backpacker budget or to splash out a bit and get a sleeper cabin. The day/night sleeper seats were the cheapest tickets and though we would have been fine there we went with Red Sleeper Cabin tickets so we got a bit of privacy and comfort after months of dorm rooms and buses. When we checked in at East Perth station we were told our carriage was out the door and follow the platform to the right, so off we went...we walked and walked and walked and eventually found our carriage. The only Red Sleeper Carriage with the only other carriages behind us being the Red Diner, a single Red Seat Carriage and the luggage/car sections. We really were toward the bottom end of the ladder on the train!

Boarding time arrived and at last we were clambering up onto the train looking for our home for the next two days. The hallway snakes up the carriage to make the cabins a weird shape on the inside with one side wall longer than the other...altogether very weird. We squeezed into the room and closed the door and almost immediately had to open it again to avoid the sense of claustrophobia that engulfed us. The seats we had were very comfy with a little table in between, we had a cubby hole each to hang our clothes in, we had a small sink that folded away into the wall, we had a window with a magic blind that could be raised, lowered or twisted to be partially open or closed fully. The bottom bunk folded out of the wall by the cubby hole and was lowered into the space where the table normally stands (it's folded away to make room). The top bunk is then pulled town from the roof and clipped into place a couple of feet above the bottom bunk. It's accessible by a ladder that's casually hung from the handle on the side of the bed. All very smartly configured. The only issue is that when the beds are out there's even less room to manoeuvre yourself...we spent most of the first night wondering how the rather portly man across the corridor was managing to survive in his room with his pretty portly mate.

We had planned on having a “Sex and The City” moment like Carrie and Samantha on the way to San Francisco with a champagne toast to start our journey but in the hurry to find the station and get on the train we didn't have a chance to find a bottle shop to get the champers. But as with everything, if the universe wants it to happen it will...we got on board and there in the Red Diner they had little bottles of Brut for sale. So, the universe agreed that we needed our toast :)

Our evening meal on the first night was a baked potato with chilli...Mmmmmm. It seemed to be the dish of choice amongst the backpackers aboard as the portion seemed to be bigger than the other options on the menu and it was one of the cheapest. We sat in the diner listening to the chatter at the table next to us where a bloke from Dublin was trying his charms on a German girl who'd said she loved the Irish accent and had met more Irish than Aussies during her time travelling here (I'd tend to agree with her on that...we Irish do seem to travel a lot..there are more Irish accents around than any other kind which is weird given how small a place Ireland is...has everyone left? Is there anyone there at all anymore?). After dinner we went for a power nap to make sure we'd have energy for the Whistle Stop tour of Kalgoorlie scheduled for shortly before 11pm that night. We pulled into the station (the second longest platform in WA) and were herded out front to waiting coaches. I thought we'd be on foot so was a bit surprised to see two big coaches waiting for us. On we got and had a look around...it was reminiscent of my holiday in Benalmadena in 2005 with Mairead...blue rinse brigade on tour and Una and I sat in the middle of them! The tour went on for a good hour or so with the crazy driver moving slower than some of the passengers would have walked faster with their zimmer frames as he gave us the history of the city (which turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected – Kmart and Red Rooster here too....shame). The tour included tales of thievery, brothels and murder. He went on at length about the topless barmaids in some of the local establishments, giving us a giggle when he told the story of how they responded to complaints from the health department about serving drinks and food in the nip. Rather than put their clothes back on, the girls wrapped themselves up in cling film so everything was still on show, but was covered up thus addressing the concerns from the health department officials. At a later date they were in trouble again but this time because people were complaining that they could see nude barmaids through the windows of pubs and hotels...the answer was to put in frosted glass or cover the windows with newspaper up to a height of 6' 6”. This stopped people from seeing stuff they didn't want to see but resulted in all the towns milk crates going missing over night as young fellas in the place stole them so they'd have a height to stand on to see over the 6' 6” cover ups.

When we got back from the tour we visited the shop in the station to see what it had to tempt us with. It was run by possibly one of the craziest people we've met along the way...she tried to serve multiple people at once but had no attention span so randomly started serving someone else before she'd finished up with 2 or 3 others. She was attempting to guess where everyone was from and then giving them her impression of their national accent. It turns out she's from Liverpool and had taken a ferry to the bottom of Ireland years ago (I've no idea where the ferry from Liverpool goes to and she didn't have a breeze). She did the typical 'top of the morning', 'aye begorra' and various other leprechaun type speeches at us. Good for a giggle at 1am :)

Waking up on the train was a bit weird, I tried to swing my legs out of bed and bashed my feet on the sink and my legs on the ladder, then walloped my arm against the window. Eventually I woke up enough to go in search of breakfast but they'd stopped serving it (it was about 8.40am!!). We spent most of the morning lounging in bed and finally got up and ready to do as we pulled into Cook, a practical ghost town on the Nullabor Plain. This use to have about 500 residents, now they're down to 5. The local hospital is closed, the school's been shutdown and the houses have all been left idle with most of them now condemned. It's gotta be a pretty lonely existence for the people of the town who are employed to refuel and rewater the trains that pull in twice a week. We helped the local economy by making some purchases in the local shop, and helped the Flying Doctors service with a donation for some books they had in the shop. An afternoon of trashy Mills & Boons books followed....what a way to spend the day :)

We continued on the train journey overnight arriving in Adelaide shortly after 7am on September 15th...now to start the spaceship adventure!

Verdict on the Indian Pacific...do it..if you like trains at all...if you like travel...do it, do it, do it!