The Indian Pacific (Across the Nullarbour)

The Indian Pacific
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Training in Australia

I'll skip Adelaide coz not much happened at all. Nice city nothing memorable to share.

The Indian Pacific

The Indian Pacific is a train that runs from Sydney to Perth (a distance of 4352 kilometres and takes 3 days to do it). I decided to cheat and join the train in Adelaide. Still a 2 day/2 night trip. It was actually no cheaper than flying but I'd heard it was an experience so I decided to give it a go.

Cook, Amazingly no McDonalds
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The train itself was about 26 carriages long with several classes of service. The cheapest of which was the red kangaroo which I now found myself in. All other classes have sleeper beds but the Red Kangaroo has just the normal recliner seats you find on any coach.

Well after the first night of absolutely no sleep due to the uncomfortable seats and the fidgety seat mate next to me I headed for the breakfast car. Now the breakfast car is shared between the paupers in the Red Kangaroo and the next one up (The Gold service). Well you could immediately see the difference. Those in the Gold service carriages were cheerily chatting away over a nice breakfast whereas those in cattle class were staring into a single cup of coffee, twitching and mumbling to themselves. Well I got some brekkie and sat down next to the person who was drooling the least and once the coffee had kicked in started chatting to a nice Ozzie girl called Larissa. Crossing the Nullarbour there really is not much to see so we settled in to a marathon game of Shithead (Card game every backpacker knows) and were soon joined by a few other bleary eyed travellers.

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The train stopped in Cook for half an hour which is a town built exclusively for the rail line and which now consisted of about 20 people. Not a great deal to see apart from the oldie worldy gaol. Essentially an outdoor toilet sized room with a padlock on it.

After yet another sleepless night the next Stop was the next day in Kalgoorlie Boulder, a mining town in the outback. After a quick bus tour (the highlight of which was a trip down the red light street) it was back on the train for yet another session of shithead and a few beers.

Eventually we started passing through civlisation again and foudn ourselves slowly pulling into Perth.