Perth to Sydney
Perth
I flew to Perth on the 2nd January 2007. The weather was really crap so I did not take any pictures, except for this one of what they call the world's largest musical instrument. It is a bell tower (like in church) and the bells ring out tunes all the time. It was different!
The Indian Pacific Train
The next day I departed Perth by the Indian Pacific Train. This amazing train travels across the Nullabor Plain, stopping at several places where one can get off and even go on organised tours. Along the way, it traverses the longest stretch of straight track in the world! All 477 kilometres of it!! Yes not a single curve in all that distance.
Some interesting facts about the train:
- There were 29 coaches, making the train about 1 kilometre long!
- There were two classes. Gold and Red Kangeroo
- Gold Service had two dining coaches and two lounge coaches
- Red Service had only one of each
- Two locomotives and one power generator got us across the continent
The plain itself is as flat as a table top. There are virtually no trees, hence the name! This is a desert that does not get much rain under the best of circumstances, but I came along and changed all of that. The first two days of the four day trip, it was puring down! We stopped in Kalgoorlie and the water was running down the streets like rivers! It was also about ten in the evening when we stopped there, so there are no pictures! Sorry!
The dining coach.
The lounge coach.
Maria is from London and we spent many an hour chatting.
Nullarbor Plain
For two days, this is all you see when you look out of the window. This endless plain is a flat as a billiard table with no trees in sight.
Cook
We stopped briefly in this ghost town in the middle of nowhere! It has four permanent inhabitants! This is the old gaol (can you imagine how hot it must have been inside one of those in summer!!! The other is just a view down the street.
Yes, and before you say that there are trees on the Nullarbor Plain, it is only here in the town where they were planted by the occupants.
Adelaide
We also stopped at Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, but it was 07:00 in the morning and everything was still closed. I wondered into the city and saw only these two things worth taking a picture of.
Broken Hill
By the time we got to Broken Hill, I had met two very nice people on the train. They were from Orange, New South Wales and the train actually went through their town, however it was in the middle of the night.
We did some pub crawling in Broken Hill and saw some nice places. We nearly missed the train as well, but we had a good time.
These two locomotives burst out of the wall of the station!
This pub had the most astonishing murials all over, even under the stairs!
Blue Mountains
Finally, some tress, grass and hills! We were coming down the Blue Mountains on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning. The train never stopped here, but I snapped some pictures as we flashed past. Most of them are too bad to publish, but just to give you an idea of the scenery, I post these two.
