The Indian Pacific is a train. An unusual train: 403m long and 747t heavy. He does an even more unusual journey: the second longest in the world. 4'352km: Perth - Kalgoorlie - Cook - Adelaide - Broken Hill - Sydney.
65 hours: 3 days and 3 nights.
The track includes the world's longest straight stretch of railway track (478km). The Indian Pacific also crosses the Nullarbor Plain desert.
Terry took me to the station. I met Míša and we checked in. At 10:55 the train left Perth, my home for about than 10 weeks.
This is how it looks like from the inside.
This is how it looked like after the train got out of Perth and its agglomeration. Huge outback fields. From time to time sheep herds and horses.
On one occasion, I could see a huge bird. It might have been the Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Indian Pacific's symbol.
Footnote from Míša: You wish it were!
Vast fields! You can see the end at the horizon!
Sunset was quite beautiful.
At night, we arrived in
Kalgoorlie. It was too late for sightseeing. Míša and I went for a 24/7 restaurant and had chicken wings with chips.
Kalgoorlie is famous for two things: gold and prostitutes. It's the only town (left) in Australia where prostitution is being tolerated. ;P
The Kalgoorlie church: I'm sure, the miners had certain things to confess...
This is how most of the second day looked like. Pretty flat, hmm?
That's
Cook. The most craziest place I've ever been. Maybe I will never see something crazier. The city is in the middle of the desert and has only 5 citizens. The shop
s open only when the Indian Pacific comes by. We had 15 minutes to explore the ghost-city.
That's the Indian Pacific's front.
It's a very long, very straight track indeed.
That's 40% of Cooks population in the souvenir shop. :D
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2nd night
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Finally out of the desert: Adelaide. But we only had an hour. We took a taxi to the famous Adelaide Central Market. It is the largest fresh food market in the Southern Hemisphere.
3 words: IT WAS TINY! (No sarcasm or irony of any kind! The Southern Hemisphere apparently doesn't contain large fresh food markets.)
Taxi back to the train. Back to the outback!
The best were the clouds. But the landscape got better as well: it became less plain.
That's the last picture of mine: it's taken in Broken Hill. We stayed there only for 15 minutes because of the trains delay. My camera run out of power. Both of my batteries were flat: apparently I forgot to recharge one of them.
Finally, with about 2h delay, we arrived in Sydney.
To sum up, the train was a great experience. While landscape might have been boring from time to time, the people we met were the complete opposite.
I recommend the Australian trains to everyone who has the time. By the way: For backpackers, it's just $299! (A flight would be about $250.)
