Trains

A lot of firsts on this trip. Our first overnight train ride with a sleeping berth from Adelaide to Alice Springs. The room is six feet long and at the widest point about four and half feet. They have managed to fit two seats, a fold down table, a sink with hot and cold water that pops out of the wall, and two sleeping berths. One bed folds out of the wall and the other comes down from the ceiling. They are about six feet long and twenty inches wide, with your head between the outside wall and the closet. Oh, did I not mention the two closets, 10w x 18d x 30h, all inches. It works, we are comfortable and both had good sleeps, although I did have visions of rolling off the top berth as the train went around a leaning corner. We were in good shape - I feel for the folks that spent the night in the economy cars, just a seat that lays back. 

The hallway between the rooms is wide enough for one person and curves back and forth to make room for the berths on each side.

I am sitting in the lounge as I type this looking out at the 1100th kilometer (only 500 more to go) of red sand, shrub brush, stunted trees and yellow grass of the Australian Outback. Not that the scenery is all the same, every 75 kilometers or so you see a new hill, or a bush road crossing the tracks. 

Then out of nowhere there will be a water well or a set of livestock pens or off on the horizon a car or transport with absolutely not another thing in sight. So far I have seen four sheep, two cows and five horses along the side of the tracks. Actually I exaggerate as the first 200 kilometers were wheat fields of the Adelaide Plains, from horizon to horizon, with the odd farm stead and village, then through a little hill cut and into the Outback. 

The trip is 26 hours and we have 5 hours to go so I will update with my next live sighting. We just crossed the border from the state of South Australia into the Northern Territory. The conductor announced the border crossing and informed us we could see snakes, lizards, eagles and possibly the odd feral camel. Whoo!, Whoo! 
Although we did jus pass a herd of about 30 cows and calves. The cattle in the south were mostly hereford and angus while up here they are a Brahma cross.

Oh my gosh, I just seen a lone dingo snooping around a water hole on the side of the tracks. There is a dingo fence built across Northern Australia to keep the dingos out of the big sheep and cattle stations, the fence is just under 6000kms long. It works most of the time, but once in a while the feral camels break it down and the dingos come south. Dingos don't just kill to eat, they kill to kill and one station has lost up to 11,000 sheep to the dingos. 

We just crossed the Finke River, which is the oldest river in the world, parts of this river are 350 million years old and it is in the same location. It is mostly dry, but it has pockets of water year round, these water pockets support fish only found in the Finke River.

Finke River

As we get closer to Alice Springs the country side changes a bit, it is hillier and seems more lush. There are more cattle along the tracks and more water holes holding water. 

Alice Springs is a rugged little town of 26,000 set 1500kms north of Adelaide and the same distance south of Darwin. It is 36 degrees here today and our taxi driver said "it's a bit mild here today mate, January is usually in the forties" and the girl at the hotel said it would be a "nice walk to town, only 25 minutes and the heat today was not too oppressive". I guess that would be like me in Calgary telling some one from here that "Oh, it's not too bad out today, minus 20 isn't that cold". Like I say things are different. 

The main industries here are mining, with the closest mine 600kms away, cattle and tourism. I cannot fathom how settlers managed to walk or ride 1500kms from the closest port town to establish mines and cattle stations in the early 1800s. The people that live here now have to be a rugged hardy folk and those that came before I can only guess at. Although maybe they are not as rugged as I think as I noticed no one on the golf course until the temperature dropped to 34! It boggles my mind even further to try and contemplate how the Aboriginals survived in this land for thousands of years before the white man came and changed their way of life. 

Tomorrow we take a coach for a five hundred kilometer drive to Ayers Rock now called Uluru and Kings Canyon. We will be traveling in the "red area" around Alice Springs which is the size of Europe. Uluru is the largest standing monolith in the world, at 348meters above ground and like an iceberg the majority of it sub surface. We will spend three days and two nights at Ayer's Rock. Then we catch a flight to Cairns...