Rail rider

Fairfax

DISTANCE TRAINING: The Indian Pacific train takes its name from the two oceans it travels between on a 65-hour, 4352km journey across Australia.

Relevant offers

I have never been so happy to see a ghost town. After nearly two days of luxury train travel across Australia, we were hanging out for the chance to stretch our legs on the Nullarbor Plain, breathe the hot desert air, and feel the Outback that was rolling past our windows.

Cook appeared out of the haze and we were expecting big things. This former Outback service town once boasted 300 residents, a hospital, school, swimming pool, airstrip, cemetery, red earth golf course and even a brass band.

How times have changed. Ravaged by the privatisation of the railways and extreme urbanisation, Cook now has only four residents.

Empty, derelict homes lie scattered across a flat, dusty, fly-infested slab of earth, the swimming pool has been filled with pumice, and the brass band is just a memory on the wind.

Then, four times a week, the Indian Pacific train rolls into town, bringing hundreds of passengers who buy teaspoons, bat away the persistent flies, take identical photographs of the historic jail, and swiftly flee back inside to the comfort of the train when the half-hour whistle- stop is over.

The world's longest straight stretch of railway track is a 478-kilometre line which starts near Cook and heads west. The Indian Pacific, the service which plies this rail line as part of the longer route from one side of Australia to the other, has saved Cook from extinction.

The Indian Pacific takes its name from the two oceans it travels between on a 65-hour, 4352km journey, passing through 86 towns, from tiny sidings such as Deakin, no more than a signpost in the desert, to pioneering mining communities such as Broken Hill, and the city of Adelaide.

Since its sister train, The Ghan, was launched in 2004, carrying passengers between Darwin and Adelaide, the Indian Pacific has been a little overshadowed in the minds of a rail-travelling public romanced by the idea of a journey up the guts of Australia.

But a classic never dies. More than three million rail enthusiasts, luxury travellers, backpackers and Outback commuters have travelled aboard the Indian Pacific in the last 39 years, creating the legend of an enduring Aussie train experience.

This view of Australia is a diverse one. It starts with the grandeur of Sydney's Central Station, and passes through the Blue Mountains, the parched New South Wales countryside, the arid South Australian outback, pretty Adelaide, historic Port Augusta, across the famed 650km wide limestone plateau of the Nullarbor, stopping for three hours in rough and racy Kalgoorlie, then on to West Australia's Avon Valley, ending at an ultra- modern train station in the resource-rich West Australian capital, Perth.

Pulling out of Sydney, the air-conditioned train is made up of 17 carriages, is 402 metres long and weighs 761 tonnes. It carries about 200 passengers. The most popular seats - about half of those onboard - are in red service. They offer reclining chairs in a carriage with 60 other people, two toilets and two showers. Red- service passengers buy meals from a kiosk, where a roast costs A$12. This class is a hit with backpackers and others not wanting to spend big to cross the country.

We settle into a gold-service cabin, which has a three-seater couch by day, and two single bunk beds at night. Each gold-sleeper cabin has an ensuite, an ingenious design where the shower cubicle incorporates a fold-away sink and toilet.

A new class, platinum, was added at the end of last year. These passengers are the folk who lounge around their expansive cabins in complimentary bath robes, drinking complimentary bubbly, making regular trips to their full-sized ensuites, just because they can. Of course one thing doesn't change, no matter what class you're travelling in: the view.

On the first night, we are welcomed at a guest reception. As we sip bubbly, the conductor talks about the features of the train. Rail enthusiasts shake their heads and click their tongues, savouring the tantalising titbits about the length, weight and history of the Indian Pacific.

The cross-country rail line started in the early 1900s in an attempt to link isolated Perth with the eastern states. Early construction involved pick and shovel, carthorse and camel. The line was finally finished in 1969, creating an unbroken track across the continent. The Indian Pacific rolled out for the first time the next year.

There is something wonderfully soporific about watching scenery roll by, changing subtly as plains give way to distant ranges, as salmon-coloured earth turns a deeper shade of ochre, as beige rivers flash by, as kangaroos, camels and emus flee from the thunder of the passing train. It's hardly high-adrenaline, fast- paced action. Rather, the pace is languid, magical, infectious.

The days start with a cup of tea delivered to your cabin, and are built around expansive meal sittings in the dining car, whistle-stops at cities and towns, drinks in the lounge car, afternoon naps, commentary over the intercom, and long periods of gazing out the window.

Sample conversation:

"There's a car," I say to my husband.

"I knew something was going to happen," he says.

We have a stack of books we barely touch. With the story unfolding out the window, reading seems an insane choice. In some places, lonely lines of telephone poles cling to the track. Sheep graze on what might generously be called pasture, victims of the droughts that have gripped the Murray-Darling Basin for years.

At one point, abandoned truck beds lie on a bank near the rail track, whispering of some lonely highway catastrophe. Out of nowhere, tiny post offices and ramshackle train stations appear, and some nights, the train stops at one of these to drop off a jackaroo or jillaroo, whose new employer is waiting in a four-wheel-drive in the dark to collect them.

Similarly, Outback farmers have been found parked at one of the far-flung sidings, with a bush fire burning on the ground, a couple of chairs, cheese and champagne, watching the stars while they wait for their wives to step off the train after a visit to the city.

Our original 15-strong crew switches over in Adelaide. We have three hours to explore the city laid out by Colonel William Light, who also planned Christchurch. We put on our sports shoes to try to walk off some of the barramundi, beef fillet, kangaroo loin, ginger and pear pudding, and two-course continental and cooked breakfasts.

On the second half of the journey, the nights are less bumpy, the flora more parched and the towns more lawless.

In Kalgoorlie, we visit the famed Super Pit goldmine, now more than 400m deep and 3.3km long. Kalgoorlie is said to have the richest square mile of earth in the world.

The tour-bus driver gets a bit carried away, and we end up being driven around suburbia checking out Christmas lights (because we don't have those in New Zealand) and his nephew's new house.

Luckily, there's still time for a quick beer at the Kalgoorlie Hotel before we return to the train.

On our last night on the train, we go to sleep in Kalgoorlie and wake up in the decidedly more lush Avon Valley. The train winds through protected parkland, thick with trees, and passes through small, immaculate valley towns.

Spring is wildflower season, when the trains pulling into Perth are heaving with sightseers heading north into the wheatbelt to see rain-starved paddocks transformed into gorgeous, rambling gardens of tiny flowers.

Even in summer, when many travellers avoid any deviation from Australia's seaside towns, the train grows considerably as it gets closer to Perth. By the time it pulls into the West Australian state capital on the third morning of the journey, our train has grown to 687m and 1322 tonne.

It's been a luxurious and surprisingly busy three days. From the delights of Cook - in a nutshell, open space and flies - to the shopping malls of Adelaide, it has been a joy to slow down a little and take in the scenery from one side of Australia to the other.

Passengers can join the train at any stop along its journey. Sydney to Perth, or vice versa, is A$1908 a person for a Gold Service sleeper cabin with meals included, and A$676 for a Red Service day- nighter seat. There are other options, such as single cabins. See gsr.com.au for further details. Air New Zealand flies direct to Sydney, Perth and Adelaide. See airnz.co.nz.

* Keri Welham travelled on the Indian Pacific courtesy of Great Southern Rail and Air New Zealand.