The Ghan

Slightly out of order I will quickly mention our trip from Darwin to Alice Springs on the Ghan, the venerable train line that traverses the country from north to south. We were a bit excited about taking the train and found very cheap last minute tickets that made it the cheapest travel option short of hitch hiking. Or by air.

Despite its constant drum beat heralding itself as the most historic, romantic and luxurious train ever, we found it was certainly lacking in the latter two catagories. The Ghan's track is laid on the route from Adelaide to Darwin where camel trains, driven by Afghan camel drivers used to ferry shipments to the string of telegraph stations dotting the Outback. History, yes. We bought the cheapest tickets possilble so we had seats, not berths, for the overnight journey. They were hardly luxurious and in fact the service, level of comfort and general ambience rather paled in comparison to the overnight trains in Thailand and even Vietnam. In those countries you are served complimentary meals at your seat or in your berth. You are given linen and, gasp, a blanket to cut the chill from the aggressive air conditioning during the night. Midnight on the Ghan found Magda sleeping on the floor covered in towls for warmth and me awkwardly folded across two seats, shivering on the brink of hypothermia. Our bags were checked for us so we didn't even have access to a sweater. We didn't have to check in our packs since massive, empty, overhead luggage racks hung from the ceilings. I considered briefly climbing up and stretching out on one.

I considered briefly climbing up and stretching out on a luggage rack

To be fair, the food in the dining car wasn't too overpriced, but the tour we booked through the Ghan for our short whistle stop tour in the town of Elizabeth was. For the amount we'd saved on our tickets we booked a boat tour to see the Elizabeth Gorge. A bus picked us up from the train station, the driver pointed out interesting animals along the route, cows, buffalo etc, and dropped us at the boat launch. One of the two canyons usually on the tour was closed due to flooding, so instead the boat took us 15 minutes up the swollen river, through the one pretty, but hardly breathtaking, canyon that was open. We then pulled up on a sand bank and walked around for a half an hour. Then we came back. We did get to glimpse a shy freshwater crocodile before it slipped into the opaque water and out of sight.

On the way back to the train the bus driver let us off for thirty minutes in the preternaturally boring town of Elizabeth. It was twenty five minutes too long.

We arrived in Alice Springs the next morning, the day of our fifth year anniversary, grumpy, sore and slightly put off by the World Famous Ghan. The sunrise over the Outback had been lovely enough to cheer us up slightly and we did glimpse a hopping kangaroo that kept pace with the train for a little while.

Our moods brightened further in Alice Springs as our CouchSurfing host picked us up from the station and drove us to her comfortable home. We spent the day catching up on internet matters and walking the blistering hot sidewalks of Alice. We spent what might in the outback pass for a romantic evening at a steak house dining on camel and kangaroo steaks and being forced to sing along with "Waltzing Matilda", "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" and other Aussie classics. The place was so touristy that they made us sit with our country's flags propped at our table, the American flag by my side, Magda next to the standard of Indonesia. Truth be told, the Indonesian and Polish flags DO look very similar.

We walked back home in the still warm darkness under a blanket of stars.