We left Adelaide on this fabulous wonder of steel: the Indian Pacific, which crosses the whole continent from Sydney to Perth.
It is a legendary luxury train with five star food and accommodation. We were, however, traveling in the cheap carriage, together with other plebeians, clapping our hands rather than rattling our jewellery so to speak.
We enjoyed this beautiful desolate view for three days, bringing our minds back to the Kazakh and Mongolian steppes. During sunset it had the most amazing sanguineous tint (#no filter). Remote and perpetual sceneries like this makes me analytical and philosophical in an objective way, and I feel that I see things so clearly.
They had a diner like buffet for us plebs. The food might not have been five star, but the service was very warm and friendly, making up tenfold for its quality.
We had been looking forward to a pit stop in a tiny town called Cook, with a population of four people, way out in the middle of nowhere. When we got there, we were not allowed to get off the train, since a supposedly armed lunatic was running amok. We waited in the train for a couple of hours until the police arrived. I have no idea how they got there so quickly, the nearest town is about 10 hours away.
The crook in Cook was not one of its four inhabitants, and was taken away by the police. Cook was built nearly a century ago to serve the train line, which later closed down when the railway was privatised.
It is now a ghost town, and you can hear the wind whistle just like in an old Clint Eastwood movie and see tumble weed rolling by (OK we didn’t see tumbleweed, but there could and should have been some).
The school was abandoned twenty years ago. That is a dingo painted on the building and I actually saw a real dingo run along the plain, which was the true icing on the cake!
The Nullarbor plain (no tree plain) stretches 200,000 square km and is an outback experience that is on the bucket list of many Australians. We were thrilled since we had not visited the true outback during this trip, but at least we got to parade around in it an hour or so.
Next time we visit Australia we will definitely visit the interior, we also want to see rock paintings.
Sadly we could not stay in this place, and got on to our lovely train and travelled..
…into Western Australia. Perth was the final destination but we quickly travelled further to…
…Freemantle, a short ride away on the coastline. We stayed for a few days and were then about to do something that we have never done before.