Tag Archive for 'Indian-Pacific'

On Walkabout: The End of the Rails and the End of A Journey

Published on March 5, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Nullarbor Crossing

As the trained pulled out of Cook the wife and I were treated to more of the “scenic” Nullarbor Plain:

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The terrain stayed like this for a couple more hours and then the train stopped and some Aborigines from this vehicle got out and boarded the train:

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We are in the absolute middle of no where but some where out here there must be an Aboriginal community and whoever these people were got on the train and just left their vehicle sitting there. The Aboriginal owners of the vehicle for whatever reason must make some good money because usually you don’t see Aborigines driving nice vehicles like this SUV.

Australia’s Nuclear Past

After a while the train slowed down and the intercom announced that the train was passing the Maralinga nuclear testing site in South Australia:

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The British with cooperation from the Australian government tested nuclear weapons here between 1956-1963. The nuclear tests remain highly controversial in Australia due to fears of radiation poisoning of local Aborigines and the fact that many Australians do not like nuclear technology. The picture from the train above is of the ruins of foundations of buildings you can see located on the north side of the train track in this Google Earth image:

On the south side of the track there was a large hole you can see in this Google Earth image. What the large hole was for no one knew, but I couldn’t get a good picture of the hole because it was on the opposite side of the train from where I was sitting and people were glued to the windows during this portion of the trip. This image kind of gives you an appreciation of how isolated this portion of Australia is:

Maralinga is located in the grew box you see to the right of the Maralinga, SA Australia sign. I continued to check out the area using Google Earth and by following the road north from where the area where the train runs through I was able to find this base:

You can see an airfield on the right and probably the main base on the left. I’m figuring the base near the train tracks to the south was probably their logistical base to unload supplies to put on trucks to move to the main base located probably about 20 kilometers to the north. I continued to follow the road north and it branches off into three holes:

I’m speculating here, but could it be that these three holes may be where the British tested their nuclear weapons? Here is a Google Earth image that gives you an overall perspective of the base:

You can see the main base that is labeled as Maralinga and the three holes located just to the north. To the south of the main base just over the ridge line is the train tracks on the sub-base where the train line runs through.

All in all it was an interesting history lesson because I had no idea the British even conducted nuclear testing in Australia. However, if I had to choose a place to conduct a nuclear test, this place would be it.

Late in the afternoon the train finally exited the Nullarbor Plain and entered the South Australian outback:

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Many people don’t realize how many trees the outback has, but for having so little water the vast majority of the Australian outback is filled with these small gum trees. Before long the sunset and the next morning we were due to arrive in Adelaide.

Last Stop Adelaide

The next morning this is the scene I woke up to:

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The sunrises over the Australian outback are always spectacular. The train ended up arriving at Keswick Terminal in Adelaide around 9AM. It took an hour before we got our bags back from the baggage car, exited the station, and got everything loaded into my Jeep that had been sitting at the station for over two weeks. Fortunately no one messed with it and everything was intact. It was about 10AM and we stopped to get breakfast and finally got on the highway and out of Adelaide around 11AM. It took us about 8.5 hours to get back to Melbourne and with the time change we were home around 9PM. It was a long day and was glad to be back after all the traveling we had done not only on that day, but for over the past two weeks as well.

Holiday Roundup

Here is a run down of the total distance covered during our entire Western Australia trip:

Air: 1700 KM

Ground: 4,400 KM

Rail: 2,400 KM

Total: 8,500 KM

Western Australia really is an amazing place with great diversity in landscapes depending if you go to the north or south of Perth. You have outback, canyons, spectacular beaches, and dolphins to the north and mountains, forests, caves, wineries, and stunning coastlines to the south. Just remember that the distances between locations is truly vast. So make sure you have a well planned out trip including knowing where you will be staying the night. Just about everyone we met in Western Australia were really friendly especially when they found out that we were Americans. Western Australia is a unique experience that many Australians have never been to and I highly recommend anyone with the time available to definitely do it.

Prior Posting: A Town Called Cook

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On Walkabout On: The Nullarbor Plain

Published on February 24, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Across the Nullarbor

We pulled out of Kalgoorlie some time around 4AM and my wife and I were understandably tired. I slept for a couple of hours before the sun rose and woke me up. When I woke up this is the view I was treated to right outside my window:

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The train was deep in the West Australian outback and the scenery was beautiful. The wife and I got up and proceeded to the dining car to east breakfast and it was about then that the train began to cross the Nullarbor Plain. Nullarbor is Latin for the words nothing and tree. In other words its the treeless plain. Here is a satellite image of this great treeless plain:

If you look at the bottom center of this image along the coast, that is the Nullarbor Plain. Here is the what the view looked like out of our dining car window:

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As you can see there is nothing but bushes across this plain. In fact these bushes stretch across this plain for 1,200 kilometers. In some areas there was hardly any bushes at all:

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The reason for this lack of vegetation is because the Nullarbor is really the world’s largest single piece of limestone. What little precipitation that falls here does not get absorbed by the ground because it is limestone. The water simply drips through the limestone and further into the ground. Thus trees cannot grow here because their roots cannot tap into any ground water. However, on a rare occasion you can see a small tree growing:

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Consequentially, this limestone plain does cause the Nullarbor to have one of the world’s most extensive cave systems. The plain is littered with caves that scientists continue to discover and explore. Occasionally we could see a dirt road presumably leading to a remote aboriginal settlement or sheep ranch. These ranches are so remote that their children go to school through a program called the School of the Air. The nearest School of the Air would be in Kalgoorlie where the teachers will teach the children on the ranches by radio. Interestingly enough we even passed an airport out in the middle of no where:

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What this airport is doing out here in the middle of no where is anybodies guess. However, the Nullarbor would have more surprises for us, like when we stopped in a town called Cook.

Next Posting: A Town Called Cook

Prior Posting: A Night in Kalgoorlie

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On Walkabout In: Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

Published on February 23, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A Night in Kalgoorlie

As the sunset over the wheat belt the Indian-Pacific continued it’s journey eastward towards the gold mining capitol of the nation, Kalgoorlie. Note that Kalgoorlie is pronounced Kal-gul-lee by Australians. Yes I know it makes no sense pronouncing it that way when it is not spelled that way, but this is Australia and that is just how they pronounce some words.

Anyway, the train pulled into Kalgoorlie around midnight. The train stops in Kalgoorlie for four hours while the train takes on supplies, water, and fuel for the ride across the upcoming Nullarbor Plain. During this four lay over you have the option of having a tour bus take you on a late night tour of Kalgoorlie. My wife and I decided to take the bus tour and it ended up being well worth it.

Our bus driver was a rather big gal; I don’t mean big as in obese but big as in strong and could probably bench press me. She was an excellent tour guide of the city. She freely admitted that she used to work in the gold mine as a driver of one of the super huge dump trucks. She quit that job after having kids and found the tour bus job more compatible to family life.

During the tour this is how she said Kalgoorlie was founded. In June of 1893 three Irish men were walking through the outback coming back from a gold find that didn’t pan out. As they were walking through the outback they decided to sit down under a tree and get some shade and rest. As they sat down under the tree they noticed some shiny rocks on the ground. The shiny rocks were gold. There was gold just littered across the ground under the tree. The tree where the first gold was found can still be seen in Kalgoorlie today. One of the Irish men, Paddy Hannan traveled to Coolgardie to cash in eight pounds of gold the prospectors had found and log his mining claim with the government. Once his claim was logged the Kalgoorlie gold rush was on. 10 years later what had been distant outback had become a thriving city of 30,000 people complete with 93 hotels and 8 breweries. The town still boasts about 30,000 people today and is still the Australia’s leading producer of gold. You can read more about the history of Kalgoorlie here.

Kalgoorlie is the source of much of the wealth of Australia and the city shows it. The city is filled with historic buildings that have been beautifully maintained to keep the historic nature of the town alive. Since we took the bus tour at night, it was extremely difficult to take quality photographs through the bus windows while moving at night. So most of my pictures look like this:

So I’ll spare you my poor images and show some of the pictures of Kalgoorlie I pulled from Google Image search.

As you can see the buildings are beautifully maintained and if you look closely in the background you can see one of the towers from the mine. Our guide said that a few years back a study was done to see how much trace amounts of gold were in the bricks of the historic buildings in town. The people who did the study found that all the historic buildings contained traces of gold in them due to the bricks being made from the dirt of Kalgoorlie. The building that was found to have the most gold was the local St. Mary’s Church:

Our bus driver told us that for a city of 30,000 people there was still about 50 bars and saloons operating in Kalgoorlie including 3 brothels. Prostitution in Kalgoorlie is legal, but the town can only support three brothels:

The bus stopped in front of the brothels, but we didn’t go inside and it really wasn’t all that impressive to see. They just looked like run down hotels. Supposedly the girls in these brothels cost anywhere from $200-250 bucks per hour. A funny fact the guide told us was that the owner of one of the brothels was in fact a transvestite that used to be the mayor of Kalgoorlie.

Another interesting aspect of Kalgoorlie is that the bars in town are famous for having scantly clad women working in them. Our guide showed us the first bar in town that began the practice of scantly clad women. This bar was off the main strip and business was lagging, so in order to get more business he began employing naked bar tenders. The city council threatened to shut him down because they were nude so the owner had them wear gloves so they wouldn’t be completely nude any more. Then the city council passed a law saying that the girls were a health risk, so in response the owner had the girls walk around with saran wrap around them. The city council gave up and the rest as they say is history, as the rest of the bars began to have their own scantly clad women as well. Supposedly some of these girls make $50AUS bucks an hour working in these bars. That is a lot of money for serving beer.

After driving around and seeing all the sights of the town the bus driver took us to see the Super Pit gold mine next. I was expecting a bit of a drive to get to this super pit, but in fact the super pit is literally on the very edge of the city and it is huge:

Here are a couple of night pictures I took of the super pit:

These pictures really don’t show how big this mine really is. You have to see it to believe it.

The mine is also known as the Golden Mile because this mine has more gold in one square mile than anywhere else in the world. The miners work day and night digging out the gold from the Super Pit. Our guide explained to us how the working hours at the mine are organized. She said that a miner will work 8 twelve hour days during the day and then get 4 days off and then work 8 twelve hour days at night and then once again 4 days off and then the cycle start all over again. She said that she was making $80,000AUS a year driving the large dump trucks. The actual miners will bring in over $100,000AUS a year. It is any wonder why there is plenty of money in Kalgoorlie to spend at brothels and bars?

Even more interesting is that the early miners that used shaft mining used to actually dig tunnels to their favorite bars so they could drink some beer during their lunch hour. To this day no one is sure how many mine shafts run underneath the city. Often the Super Pit miners find historic equipment from old mine shafts that they run into as they dig. There is a museum in town that collects all the equipment the diggers find.

A little known fact is that Kalgoorlie actually has a lot of water under the ground, the problem is that the water has 16 times more salt in it than the ocean. So it is not drinkable and drinkable water has to be piped in from the hills east of Perth through a 530km pipeline which is considered the world’s longest water main. The salt water does have one major use though, it pushes gold to the surface as it rises. So the Super Pit has to keep pumping water out of the mine and then collect gold, keep digging, pump out water, collect the gold, and keep repeating the process. This process is supposed to end in 2017 when the Super Pit is expected to run out of gold. However, another gold find has already been claimed and ready to start being dug once the Super Pit runs out of gold. The mineral wealth days of Kalgoorlie are no where near an end. The plan for the Super Pit after it is closed, is to turn it into a lake. When that happens that will be one large, deep lake. It could be the first outback water skiing location. Here is a Google Earth image of Kalgoorlie and the Super Pit mine:

Notice how close the mine is to the city and how big this future lake will be.

Anyway after checking out the Super Pit the guide dropped us back off at the train station and we once again boarded the train and were on our way. Though our stay in Kalgoorlie was short it was extremely interesting. The city and it’s people are really unlike the rest of Australia and my wife and I were glad to get a glimpse into the lives of the some of the people responsible for the mineral wealth boom of Western Australia.

Next Posting: Across the Nullarbor Plain

Prior Posting: From Perth On the Indian-Pacific

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On Walkabout On: The Indian-Pacific Train

Published on February 21, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

From Perth on the Indian-Pacific

After finishing our tour of the Margaret River region we headed back to Perth:

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Perth really is a nice city. Lots of parks, well laid out and easy to get around, the traffic isn’t too bad, and the airport is conveniently located near the city. The pleasant Swan River runs through the city and beaches on the Indian Ocean are nearby. Really the only thing that Perth doesn’t have compared to Sydney or Melbourne is the historical buildings. It seems like mostly everything in Perth is brand new due to the mineral boom in Western Australia bringing much money to the Western Australia capitol of Perth.

Probably the most unusual thing about Perth is the fact that it is there to begin with. The city is literally thousands of miles from anywhere. The nearest major Australian city is Adelaide which lies over 2,000 miles away. Perth is actually closer to Jakarta, Indonesia than it is to the Australian capitol of Canberra. Perth is nearly closer to India than to Sydney on the opposite side of the continent. Perth holds a population of 1.5 million people which is nearly the entire population of the state of Western Australia. Western Australia has a total population of 2 million people, which means that in a state the size of five Texas’s, only 500,000 people live outside the capitol. After spending over two weeks driving around Western Australia I definitely believed it.

Anyway we turned in our campervan at the Britz dealership near the airport and then stayed the night at a hotel in Perth. The next morning we had to wake up early to catch the morning Indian-Pacific train back to Adelaide. We had a taxi take us to the train station. Train stations in Australia are usually older historic buildings, the best example of this being the Flinders Street Station in Melbourne.

However, in Perth the train station where you board the Indian-Pacific has to be by far the gaudiest train station I had ever seen. When the cab driver stopped I asked him if he had taken us to the local KGB headquarters because that is what the East Perth Railway Station looked like. It was an ugly drab gray building with antennas sticking out of it:

Could there possibly be a more uglier major train station in all of Australia than the East Perth Railway Station? I sure haven’t seen one. Anyway inside the train station they did have a nice little historical display about the early railway history of Perth including an old railway car:

When it came time to board the train my wife and I were quite surprised by how busy the Indian-Pacific was. The train was nearly packed by the time we left the East Perth terminal:

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Fortunately the scenery improved quite a bit once the train pulled out of the terminal. About 45 minutes east of Perth the train began to travel through the Darling Ranges. The ranges features rounded, heavily forested hills with numerous creeks running down the hillsides. It was obviously difficult to take pictures through glass of the country side in a moving train but I was able to get a few decent shots during the train journey. Here was my best shot of the Darling Ranges:

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However, after about another 45 mintues of traveling through the mountains the scenery turned back into this:

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We had entered back into the Australian wheat belt again. It didn’t take to long before the train was swallowed up by the salt plains again as well:

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My wife and I were sitting in the dining car eating dinner and we were talking to some Aussie tourists also eating dinner and they were wondering what the white sand was. I told them that it wasn’t sand, but really salt and then proceeded to tell them how the environmental damage caused by the deforestation of the country is producing these salt plains that are destroying the land. They had never heard of this, which I found incredible since I find this to be a huge environmental issue that Australia is facing and yet Australians know little about this problem. This is an environmental crisis that is tangibly visible and causing massive eco-system damage now, yet people are more concerned about global warming or better yet something that has nothing to do with the environment in Australia, Japanese whaling.

After dinner we sat down in the lounge car and continued to watch the salt planes and salt lakes pass. It was interesting to over hear all the people talking about how beautiful the white sand and lakes outside their windows were:

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You can’t tell from this picture, but this salt lake actually went on for miles. It was by far the largest salt lake I saw in Western Australia. So many people were excited by the scenery, I was depressed by it.

Next Posting: A Night in Kalgoorlie

Prior Posting: Cave Exploring in Western Australia

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On Walkabout to: Western Australia

Published on November 21, 2006 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Outline of Journey

My wife and I wanted to travel to Western Australia on the Indian-Pacific railway ever since we got back from traveling to the Northern Territory on Australia’s famous Ghan Train. The Indian-Pacific railway travels across the entire continent of Australia from Sydney to Perth. This rail journey is considered one of the best in the world. I booked tickets for us on the train from Adelaide to Perth instead of taking the full ride from Sydney because it is an easy drive from Melbourne to Adelaide and the journey on the train from Adelaide to Perth is much shorter.

Once in Perth I had a campervan reserved from Britz to travel around the state in. The first place we were going to visit was the main tourist attractions north of Perth such as the Pinnacles, Kalbarri, & Shark Bay. After traveling up the northern coast we then planned to drive back down the coast and towards Wave Rock followed by exploring the southwestern area of Australia. Some of the main areas we planned on visiting in the southwest were the Stirling Ranges, Albany, the karri forests, and Margaret River area.

To Adelaide

However, before we could see any of the sites we had to first get to Adelaide to catch the Indian-Pacific train to get to Perth. This ultimately became easier said then done. First of all we had to complete the eight hour drive from Melbourne to Adelaide. From Melbourne to Ballarat the drive along the Western Highway isn’t to bad with some rolling hills and gorges to see along the way. However, after Ballarat besides seeing the awesome Grampians mountains there is nothing but flat land and farms to see. The drive gets pretty boring until you reach Australia’s largest waterway the Murray River:

Adelaide is only about two hours further up the highway from the river. The drive into Adelaide from the river is actually quite scenic as the Western Highway passes up and over the Lofty Ranges and descends into Adelaide. Once into Adelaide we drove through downtown and headed for the train station:

We got to the Keswick Railway Terminal where the Ghan Train departs without incident unlike the last time we traveled to Adelaide to depart from this same train station on the Ghan train. However though we got the train station without incident we would soon find out that this trip to the station would have its own drama.

There was a long line to get on the train and while waiting in line the ticket lady came and informed everyone that the train had derailed and would probably be out of service for a week to ten days. The railroad would pay to fly people to Perth instead however they would not pay to fly my wife and I to Perth because we had a backpacker pass to use the train. The railroad’s terms and conditions said they would not pay for plane tickets for people who bought the six month backpacker pass to use the train.

That left us with no choice but to book a flight and fly to Perth instead. I was able to get a flight to Perth for the next day which left us now with the job of trying to find a hotel. It took us sometime to find a hotel with an open room, but eventually we got lucky when a Comfort Inn had a cancellation for one of their large family rooms. We had to pay for a hotel room that was much bigger then what we needed but at least we had a room. The next day we then headed over to the airport to board our Virgin Blue flight to Perth.

The Journey Begins

All in all between the airplane tickets and the hotel room the railway derailment put a unexpected $700 expense into my travel budget which I wasn’t happy about. However we did make it to Perth and I ended up picking up my campervan in much less time then it took me the last time my wife and I rented a campervan in Perth. With the campervan in hand in no time we began heading north to begin our adventure in Western Australia.


Rainbow over farm land north of Perth

The drive out of Perth was actually quite easy and I was impressed how well the roads were laid out. The area north of Perth is pleasant with some rolling hills and wineries which are then followed by vast agricultural lands. We eventually hit the turn off to Cervantes that would take us to our first destination of our journey, Nambung National Park’s Pinnacles Desert. As we drove down the road the sun was beginning to set which created an amazing site as the large wind farm around us contrasted with the brilliant colors of the sky:

As night fell we pulled into Cervantes and found the only campervan park in town. The people that worked at the front counter were extremely welcoming and fortunately they had a site for us to use. All in all not a bad day considering the unlucky start we had to our holiday. Things were looking up and the following day would prove to be even better.

Next Posting: To the Pinnacles

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