IndianPacific - 3

Friday, Sept. 14

Much of today is to be spent crossing the “nullarbor”(treeless plain, pronounced NULL-uh-ber) featuring nearly 300 miles of perfectly straight track. Before that, I thought I’d tell you about our accommodations.

The single sleeper-cabins are wedge-shaped, successive pairs of cabins being mirror images – wide ends abutting, narrow ends abutting. There are two rows of cabins, offset so the wide ends of the wedges on one side are opposite the narrow ends on the other. The car has 18 cabins and two toilets at one end, two showers at the other. With this layout, the center hallway undulates like a snake, or a sine-wave, depending on your preferred image. Hadn’t ever seen that in the movies – where my train knowledge comes from.

The double cabins in other cars are rectangular, along only one side of the car, and the aisle squeezes along one side. This is the layout I’ve seen in train-movie comedies or murder mysteries as characters careen or sneak in and out of various compartments. I can’t recall the movie, but I remember Cary Grant landing in some lovely lady’s cabin and arms in such circumstances.

The wide end of a cabin includes a sink/vanity; the narrow one has a six-inch wide closet. There’s a cushioned chair, a fold-down writing table, and a footstool all along the outside wall. All this folds out of the way when the bed is folded down out of the wall by the “staff.”

At mealtimes – four “bachelors” have gravitated to sit together: Don, from Calgary; Dennis, from Sydney; Dick, and I. Almost everybody else is husband-wife couples, mostly pensioner age plus some. Dennis, who runs a limo service in Sydney and is somewhat younger than the other three of us, is riding the train to Perth to see his sister. This is the second time he has taken the train to visit her. Why? we ask. Says he’s hoping to find romance. Not much chance in the Gold Kangaroo class. Maybe he should try coach next time! Anyhow, Dennis is helpful in explaining Australia to us. For example, he says Australia is the only country whose coat of arms features two animals used for food – kangaroos and emus. He’s also a vegemite guru. We try to get Dick to put some on his toast, but we’ve said enough bad things about it, that there’s no way. Dennis said he quit eating vegemite when they sold out to Kraft. No longer an Aussie product – he’s boycotting.

Don, from Canada, not to be confused with Don from Sydney, is on his way to Perth to visit his son. As we did, he spent a few days in Sydney and chose the train to cross the country. From Perth, he, his son, and his son’s girlfriend are going to explore some of the SW coast as are we.

OK, back to the scenery. Here’s what the nullarbor looks like. That's a RR maintenance road along the track in the foreground.

Our stop in the morning is at Cook. Cook once featured a school and a hospital, but now is a ghost town with a population of two people – a caretaker and his wife. This is a stop for “watering up” the train and for a crew change. Two new “drivers” get on; two get off and catch the next train which is, or will take them to, their next assignment. I take it there are accommodations for waiting crews – they don’t sit by the track with their bags.

A fellow passenger and I took each other's pictures by the engine.

At Cook, we’re near the midpoint of 477 kms (almost 300 miles) of straight track – the world’s longest. This is what we came to see!

Two or three hours after we leave Cook we leave the nullarbor. Here’s a picture of that. Oh, wait. That’s the same as the picture above. Close enough, though.

We’ll be in Kalgoorlie this evening for our next stop. Hope to get internet access there and post some of information the world is waiting for. I know people at home are anxiously checking their computers, waiting for word from the Reinert/Easterling expedition, like waiting for Lindbergh’s radio signal.

In Kalgoorlie we take a bus tour by dark to see the huge pit gold mine, houses, government buildings, and businesses. After that Dick and I walk back to one of the pubs that we’ve been told has internet. It does, but we need change to operate it. Trouble is, the bar is crammed with people watching a football playoff game (Australian rules). Can’t get up to the bar to get change and we’re running out of time (toot, toot! not really) so we’re not successful. I do manage to call Susie to let her know where we are.

Tomorrow it’s Perth where we’ll pick up a camper van and head south, driving on the wrong side of the road. Wish us luck.

Cheers,

Rob