Sorry, Ant and Dec, there’s a better way to experience the outback that doesn’t involve camping with Nigel Farage or Matt Hancock. If you want real star treatment, how about all-inclusive service on board the world’s longest passenger train passing through vivid technicolour landscapes? I’m not a celebrity, but get me on there.
Whether it’s Brief Encounter or the latest Hercule Poirot film, the romance of train travel has lost none of its allure. The Ghan – a mile-long train cutting through the heart of Australia for three nights and four days – matches them for cinematic experience.
From the tropical north to the surfy south via its Red Centre, I was gripped at the window by the 1,851 miles of scenery as it shifted from urban grey to lush rainforest then rusty red.
My adventure began in swampy, steamy Darwin, Australia’s hottest city. It’s the capital of the Northern Territory, which is five times the size of the UK but with a population of just 250,000.
There are more crocodiles here than anywhere else in the world, with croc-themed excursions aplenty. You can swim with them – in a secure cage, happily. I only had a short and snappy stay in Darwin, so I joined a more sedate sunset harbour cruise instead.
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On board the Charles Darwin restaurant boat, we tucked into a buffet including local prawns, oysters, jewfish (like bass) and bay bugs, which are similar to crayfish.
Paul stopped off to warm up by a fire (DAILY MIRROR)
Paul Cockerton took a ride on the Ghan (DAILY MIRROR)After a night at the lovely Adina, an Aboriginal-owned waterfront hotel, it was a quick coach transfer to the railway station and all aboard The Ghan, named after the Afghan camel riders who somehow carved out a north/south route through the continent 150 years ago. The sleek sleeper train was so impossibly long I couldn’t see the back while I took the near-obligatory selfies at the front. You can take a golf buggy to your cabin if it’s all too much.
This is luxury but cosy travel. Choose a single or bunk-bed cabin in standard (gold) class, or upgrade to platinum for a twin or double bed, plus a few more home comforts. Each walnut-panelled cabin offers its own bathroom including shower, a huge window, a wardrobe, and a three-seater settee which transforms into your bed.
However, passengers spend most of their time on board in the communal Outback Explorer Lounge, featuring an all-day, all-inclusive bar, with meals in the Art Deco Queen Adelaide restaurant one carriage along.
This was definitely not a Bushtucker trial but fine dining, with all meals freshly prepared by on-board chefs. There were plenty of native offerings like kangaroo (tastes like game), barramundi (a flaky, meaty fish) and crocodile (like a chunkier calamari) all paired with local wines.
But you don’t have to choose adventurous dishes and if you have dietary requirements, submit them in advance because what they pack on to the train is all they can serve. There’s no popping to the shop, there are none for hundreds of miles.
There’s also no TV and only intermittent spurts of wi-fi and mobile reception which makes for a spectacular enforced digital detox. Just switch off, relax and enjoy the scenery and camaraderie. It’s a kind of cruise ship on wheels and most of your “shipmates” are retired couples, with a good smattering of solo travellers on midlife adventures.
Mainly they’re fair dinkum Aussies but with a few fellow Brits too.
In no time at all, I’ve become temporary best mates with my fellow travellers in the lounge, all of us drinking in the sunrises, sunsets and cocktails. By the time I’ve slinked back to my cabin at night, the staff have turned my settee into a bed, with cotton sheets and pillows.
Don’t worry about dinner jackets and ball gowns, smart casual attire is fine on The Ghan, along with practical walking shoes, a hat, and sunscreen for the time off the train.
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After a decent night’s kip we were pulling into our first stop at Katherine Gorge, now properly known by the Aboriginal name of Nitmiluk, owned by the indigenous Jawoyn people who show tourists around 364 days a year.
Reassuringly, throughout the journey, The Ghan operators Journey Beyond Rail work closely and respectfully with the indigenous communities who have lived in Australia for 40,000 years.
The Ghan is the longest train in the world (Getty Images)Each day on The Ghan you can choose from at least three excursions and I opted for a river cruise between the sandstone cliffs of this national park, my eyes peeled for the resident freshwater crocodiles. “Is that a croc?” I asked hopefully as water splashed in the distance. “No, it’s a logadile”, laughed our guide, pointing out a submerged branch. If you’re more adventurous you can also go wild swimming or canoeing here.
On the second day we pulled into Alice Springs, the iconic outback town which made its name in the Australian gold rush. Here the excursions included a very tempting helicopter ride to the sacred site of Uluru. That one required an extra fee, but virtually all others were included in the cost.
On this, my first visit to Oz, I wanted to see as many of their amazing animals as possible. At the Alice Springs Desert Park, in the foothills of the MacDonnell mountains, there were emus, dingoes and kangaroos as well as thorny devil lizards, malas (small wallabies) and the rabbit-like bilbies.
There was also a stunning “natural theatre show” where free-flying birds of prey demonstrate hunting and foraging. A tour guide also took us through the bush plants used for medicine and food like witchetty grubs – tasting and testing is encouraged. To the expert eye, the desert is like a natural chemist shop.
On the subject of flora and fauna, if you’ve always hankered to head Down Under but were anxious about their creepy-crawlies, perhaps my experience will prove reassuring. The first few times I gingerly touched a door handle or lifted a loo seat I was expecting something unexpected. But whether in the big cities or the remotest countryside, I saw no spiders or snakes.
Our evening meal wasn’t on the train but instead under the stars at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station.
While the barbecue sizzled, I strolled around this historic wonder, built in 1872 to help provide lines of communication for European settlers from south to north of Australia and then all the way back home. There’s
a museum, blacksmith demonstrations, camel rides, and you can toast marshmallows and your fellow diners by the roaring campfires.
Day three and I was still getting to grips with how vast this country is. We passed a cattle station that’s bigger than Belgium. The dingo fences stretch for thousands of miles. And there are so many wild camels roaming around – about 1.2 million – they are exported to the Middle East. Strewth!
My final off-train coach excursion snaked through the stunning Breakaways mountains to a strange moonscape. “Welcome to the middle of nowhere,” our tour guide aptly announced, at the eccentric mining town of Coober Pedy.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was filmed here, as was Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and NASA trained its astronauts and tested Mars buggies here.
The local population of about 2,000 fortune-seekers live underground
due to the punishing outdoor temperatures hitting as high as 40C in summer and not much above zero in winter. They make the best of it with a horse-racing track, a drive-in movie theatre, and even an 18-hole golf course.
Many underground homes are lavish and boast as many as 21 rooms, with everything from a cinema room to a bowling alley. At the excellent Umoona Opal Mine, we were let loose with pickaxes to find a gem. Next morning, I awoke to find we were already on the final straight and just a two-course breakfast away from our final stop at Adelaide, the largest city in South Australia.
Somehow this train journey lasting 53 hours and 15 minutes hadn’t been long enough. I also noted we had travelled the equivalent of London to Moscow and arrived bang on time.
It’s hard to avoid that cliched phrase of a “once in a lifetime” trip.
Fortunately there’s a chance to make it twice in a lifetime as Journey Beyond Rail also operates the four-day Indian Pacific train from Sydney to Perth, from east to west. And there are the Spirit of Queensland and the Spirit of the Outback long-distance services too.
I feel like a celebrity, get me back out there.
Book the holiday
- Singapore Airlines flies from Heathrow to Darwin, returning from Adelaide starting at £1,434. singaporeair.com
- Australian Sky offers a seven night Darwin to Adelaide holiday travelling on The Ghan from £4,499pp. Includes four nights in hotels and three nights on the train, with excursions to Katherine Gorge, Alice Springs and Coober Pedy. australiansky.co.uk
- Rooms at the Adina Darwin Waterfront Hotel start at around £165 a night B&B. adinahotels.com
- More info at australia.com
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