The Indian Pacific (http://www.gsr.com.au/indian/) travels between Sydney and Perth, passing through Adelaide, Cook and Kalgoorlie. I boarded at Adelaide and prepared myself for the 38 hour journey. Travailing as a backpacker I had the cheapest ticket. So for the next day and a half I would be sleeping, eating and generally living in my seat. Fortunately for me I had Jo to keep me company for the whole journey. The train left Adelaide at 18:40 on Sunday and started it's journey. I've never used trains very much and after this journey I'm not that inspired to use them again. It seemed to take forever to make it's way out of Adelaide and get up to speed, although it does have nearly 20 carriages. The people in our cabin were very active and didn't like to sit down for long.
We heard that the price of food on the train was quite expensive and so we had prepared sandwiches and I had two boxes of breakfast bars to munch on. To pass the time I had my book which I started back in Brisbane about 6-7 weeks ago. Some think this is quite amazing, but I was in no rush. I didn't get that much sleep that night as the movement of both the train and the people within it. Also the seats were not that comfortable despite using a pillow to absorb the vibrations from my head.
I spent the next day people watching, reading and staring at the endless nothings and watching movies on the TV. To the annoyance of Jo and myself every so often a recored voice would shadow the films audio and proceed to tell us about the area coming up or some uninteresting fact that you didn't want to know. After the voice had finished there would be a 10 second delay before the film sound would return. I think you can imagine why this became annoying after the ninth or tenth time.
The views out of the windows at first were interesting as you can't comprehend just seeing nothing but orange dirt and a few bushes for hundreds of miles. The Indian Pacific travels along a piece of track 478 kms or 297 miles long that is completely straight. This is the longest piece of straight rail track in the world. Out day was made more enjoyable by a family siting adjacent to us. A mother plus her three daughters of about 7, 4 and 2. The youngest was great and still in nappies. Her ability to swing from the arm rests, crawl on all fours from one end of the carriage to the other without being put off by on coming traffic and having a great talent for outputting loud rawing sounds similar to nothing I've ever heard before was simply, amazing. Something I shall never forget.
As we got into the afternoon, I started to feel board and must of started to annoy Jo as she let me use her CD Player. This I think saved me. Jo has what I would consider not a bad taste in music, but I draw the line at Girls Aloud. I started to count the hours until 21:00 because when we reached it we would only have another twelve hours to go, yes that right twelve hours.
The journey was broken up by a stop at Kalgoolie. This town in the middle of no where, I think is known for two things gold and girls. It had a working mine in which gold had been found, now just a tourist attraction. For some reason it is also known to have a number of adult entertainment establishments as friend informed me. Our two and a half hour break was spent stocking up on Tooheys, before we boarded for the last ten and a half hours.
The morning came and brought with it the prospect of getting off this train. As we entered the edge of Perth everyone in the carriage was busy collecting together their stuff and getting ready for departure. The train stopped and we got off, collected our bags and got a taxi to our hostel. The torture had finally ended.
We heard that the price of food on the train was quite expensive and so we had prepared sandwiches and I had two boxes of breakfast bars to munch on. To pass the time I had my book which I started back in Brisbane about 6-7 weeks ago. Some think this is quite amazing, but I was in no rush. I didn't get that much sleep that night as the movement of both the train and the people within it. Also the seats were not that comfortable despite using a pillow to absorb the vibrations from my head.
I spent the next day people watching, reading and staring at the endless nothings and watching movies on the TV. To the annoyance of Jo and myself every so often a recored voice would shadow the films audio and proceed to tell us about the area coming up or some uninteresting fact that you didn't want to know. After the voice had finished there would be a 10 second delay before the film sound would return. I think you can imagine why this became annoying after the ninth or tenth time.
The views out of the windows at first were interesting as you can't comprehend just seeing nothing but orange dirt and a few bushes for hundreds of miles. The Indian Pacific travels along a piece of track 478 kms or 297 miles long that is completely straight. This is the longest piece of straight rail track in the world. Out day was made more enjoyable by a family siting adjacent to us. A mother plus her three daughters of about 7, 4 and 2. The youngest was great and still in nappies. Her ability to swing from the arm rests, crawl on all fours from one end of the carriage to the other without being put off by on coming traffic and having a great talent for outputting loud rawing sounds similar to nothing I've ever heard before was simply, amazing. Something I shall never forget.
As we got into the afternoon, I started to feel board and must of started to annoy Jo as she let me use her CD Player. This I think saved me. Jo has what I would consider not a bad taste in music, but I draw the line at Girls Aloud. I started to count the hours until 21:00 because when we reached it we would only have another twelve hours to go, yes that right twelve hours.
The journey was broken up by a stop at Kalgoolie. This town in the middle of no where, I think is known for two things gold and girls. It had a working mine in which gold had been found, now just a tourist attraction. For some reason it is also known to have a number of adult entertainment establishments as friend informed me. Our two and a half hour break was spent stocking up on Tooheys, before we boarded for the last ten and a half hours.
The morning came and brought with it the prospect of getting off this train. As we entered the edge of Perth everyone in the carriage was busy collecting together their stuff and getting ready for departure. The train stopped and we got off, collected our bags and got a taxi to our hostel. The torture had finally ended.
