I got on the Indian Pacific at 8:30. I said goodbye to everyone and got out of Broken Hill. I was glad to see that my seat has plenty of leg room; I can extend my legs fully and barely hit the seat in front of me. This is more than twice the room of the other seat in the car. Yay The train is slowly departing the station. The woman next to me seems nice. Her name is Helen and she has travelled all over the world. We've been talking for a few minutes and it seems to be going well. There seems to be some cute girls on the train as well. This may be a fun trip.
Thursday 9:20AM
Ok, i guess Helen's travel stories have already died. Odd, since she's been all over the world. Time to try out this new MP3 player. It took a few minutes to get it on random shuffle. Should be a good choice, there is nothing but good stuff on this baby.
Thursday 9:45AM
Train seems to be moving slower than expected. I thought we'd be cruisin'. I'm seen this stretch of landscape three times already, but this time is a bit different. The recent rain has turned the endless red dirt into endless red dirt with green plants. I should probably take a photo, but my camera is in my bag. Maybe I'll do a logic puzzle.
Thursday 10:00AM
Maybe I'll read a book. Papillion or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Mmmmm. I love saying that name. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.......
Thursday 10:05AM
I chose Papillion.
Thursday 10:15AM
The dining car looked like a dining car. I think I'll have a candy bar.
Thursday 10:45AM
Just got back from playing solitaire in the dining car with my cribbage board obviously showing. No takers.
Thursday 11:00AM
Ok, I'm ready to get off now. How many hours are left? oh, 46 more. Not too bad...
Thursday 3:00PM
Insanity has waned a bit. I'm slowly getting used to the endless, mild boredom. It matters not because we now docking in Adelaide. Do trains dock?
Thursday 5:00PM
Downtown Adelaide only took an hour to see, if you exclude the 30 minute walk each way from the train station. I stopped in a food court in Chinatown right at close and was able to get a huge bowl of random old Chinese food for only $4.00! It tastes even better knowing it is cheap. I approached the train station to find it driving away! Thankfully, it was refueling or something like that.
Thursday 8:30PM
Been on the tracks for the last two hours and they've gone quite quickly. I finally found some people to play cards with, but we couldn't find a place to play. It was a dinner time, so the dining car is closed to non-eaters and the empty seats in front are off limits, even though nobody will be sitting in them for at three more hours. I watched a beautiful sunset over the rolling hills and gum trees of the Adelaide plains.
Friday 7:00AM
Woke up after eight hours of terrible chair sleep. The neck pillow sharon and les lent me helped though. My dreams were nuts though. The highlights were me being a terrible fill-in announcer at a hockey game that eventually cancelled due to an ice-melt delay. ("I just don't get what happened with you Aaron, you do such a good job at announcing the soccer games!" Uh yeah?). The other was the Brittany Spears falling in love with me. Apparently, I was the only person she could trust. I don't like Brittany. I don't respect Brittany. I don't find her attractive. The landscape was too pretty to let me fall back asleep. Stretching as far as I could see was a forest of scrub, broken by occasional patches of Belah trees. All was set against the characteristic Aussie red dirt. The general beauty of the Aussie countryside is often breathtaking in its uniqueness (To Texas and Southwest US residents: please hold back your comments your dirt is yellow. To Mojave and New Mexico residents: your trees and scrubs are different.) This is why I chose the train: to have the opportunity to see the beautiful, seldom seem part of the country. There are pine trees out there which I find odd, I though pines hated the desert. Helen tells me that it is a very ancient and native conifer that somehow found a way to live in this harsh environment.
The landscape is not hilly, by ridgey. Just endless ridges, on after another for miles and miles. The soil is not just red, but yellow and orange as well. I never imagined so much color with such a limited palate. Monet would have fun here.
Friday 8:30AM
Flat, completely flat. Flatter than Nebraska.
Friday 11:00AM
Still incredibly flat. I've seen such flat before, but it is stunning that it could be so vast; at least the great plains have some hills. This is the Nullarboor. It was once a large sea when Australia was part of Antartica. The soil of the plain is composed of mostly broken up seashells. We stopped in the ghost town of Cook in the Western end of South Australia. Like most ghost towns, there isn't much. When the rail industry flourished, it was once a thriving town, full of people. It even had its own golf course, even though grass can't grow here. The stretch of track the longest straight stretch of tracks in the world, it stretches for hundreds of miles without a single turn.
Friday 6:00PM
Slowly, the landscape changes. The ground went from red to yellow, then back to red. The scrub became very sparse for an hour, then started getting thick again. At the most empty point was ironically named town of Forrest, Australia, population 2. It is just an airstrip in the middle of nowhere for refueling. An hour after we hit Forrest, an actual forest started to emerge and hills too! I am surrounded by dense forest by Australia standards.
Friday 9:00PM
Landed in a small mining town of Kalgoorli. Don't pronounce the "r" though, or else the Aussies won't know what you are talking about. My first impression was wow, Broken Hill pt. 2. My next impressions weren't too different. It had all the staples of a mining town: relaxed atmosphere, a big skimp dump, and a pub at every corner.
A group of foreigners and I hit up one pub that looked quite happening. We must have chosen right, because the entire town was drinking there. We swapped stories and I picked up some tips on what to see in Australia. We decided to move on and hopefully find some karaoke. Our first stop was the Public Bar. We were greeted by a poorly sung rendition of "You make loving fun" by Fleetwood Mac. Sadly, this was not karaoke, just bad professionals. We didn't want to stay and given the cold-unwelcome stares of the five patrons at the bar, this Public Bar seemed quite private.
Our next step was the Wild Wild West. After five minutes there, I thought I was hallucinating, but a second glace proved otherwise; all the bartender women were in their underwear, even though none were attractive enough to really warrant this. Ben, our Perthian companion explained that many small town bars have "Skimp" nights, typically on Sundays. Leave it to the Aussies to find ways to get poeple out to the pubs on a sunday. We finished our evening with a few hours of cards on the train until 1AM. None of us really wanted to go to "bed".
Saturday 6:00AM
I awoke too early after too poor of sleep. Perth is not too far away. The countryside reminds me of Missouri, only brown, though with more rain, I'm sure you'd be fooled (just pretend the gum trees are maples!)
Saturday 9:00Am
The train ride is done and I am actually a little sad. I've gotten used to the cramped space, lack of mobility and inability to do anything. I met some cool people. I even plan to do a Perth road trip with a few people from the train. Goodbye Indian-Pacific.
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