The Ghan

The Ghan is one of Australia's two trans-continental railway lines – running south to north, from Adelaide, through Alice Springs, and up to Darwin. The route was found by Afghan trackers (using imported camels) in order to lay a telegraph wire to link Adelaide to the Empire – hence the name of the original Adelaide to Alice route; the Afghan Express.

These days, the standard gauge line, to the west of the original, is unashamedly a tourist attraction. Darwin to Alice is a mere 23 hours, so we decided to go for the cheapest option of the red-class seat. The train doesn't exactly rocket along the tracks, and four hours after leaving Darwin, we pulled into Katherine.



















Here the train sits for four hours, giving you the choice of wandering round a small godforsaken outback town (although the third biggest in the Northern Territory), joining a boat tour of the Katherine Gorge, or a helicopter flight over it. We opted for the boat trip, and were joined by sixty members of club 80 to 130 from gold-class.














If you're in the area, the Katherine Gorge is certainly worth a visit (you can do it as a day trip out of Darwin). Katherine itself is a major stop for big Oz road trips, although you'd have had to been away from civilisation a long time to contemplate a long stay.














We didn't see much of the town except the supermarket were we were dropped off to buy supplies for the onward journey. Due to the Northern Territory intervention act – aimed at reducing alcoholism in the indigenous community – everyone must produce photo ID, which is scanned, in order to buy alcohol. Back on the train with freshly bought cold beer and sparkling wine, we chugged off into the night.














We arrived bang on time, at 9am, into Alice. If they did away with the six hours of stops, and ran the train at 80mph rather than the pedestrian 50mph, the Darwin – Alice leg could be done in under 12 hours, but then you might as well save another 10 hours (and quite a bit of money) and fly it. The days of the old Ghan are long gone – where trains could be stranded for weeks due to flooding or termites eating the sleepers, sometimes forcing the driver to shoot wildlife to feed the passengers. However, if you do have a romantic attachment to long train journeys, why not?