478 km straight railway track...

A very brief stop in Melbourne before I set on my first leg of one of the world's longest train journeys from Melbourne to Adelaide. This first bit was rather uneventful, predominantly Victorian agricultural countryside, whereas the coast holds the interesting bit. In fact, Adelaide was also a little disappointing. I have been told that the area around it is getting drier and drier so that South Australia is increasingly poorer and less desirable to live in. It is wine country and the beaches were very nice but I was a little unimpressed with the city. First impression was a taxi man who asked me why I'd bothered to come, was decidedly racist and insisted on pointing out all the homeless people and homeless shelters and noting their proximity to my accommodation. Second impression was that everything seemed to be closed at 8pm, so I took advantage of the hostel rather than the city initially. After wandering around in the day, it grew on me slightly. It has some nice older buildings and I enjoyed the art gallery. It is noticeably more ethnically diverse than Tasmania and Perth, and probably Melbourne as well. It is also noticeably poorer.

From Adelaide, I caught the India-Pacific line to Perth. This crosses the infamous Nullarbor Plain and take two nights and a day. Being a poor backpacker, I was also sleeping in the 'Red Class', which means 48 seats in a carriage with one loo and shower. I actually really enjoyed it. Everyone was on their way back to see people for Christmas and there was quite a mixture of people all willing to chat to each other. The food was reasonably good, I slept relatively well and the staff were ridiculously friendly, one gave me free chocolates! Shame they were chocolate covered raisins...

The landscape was also really impressive. I wanted to do the ride firstly to have a break from flying and secondly to appreciate the scale of Australia. I also happened to be there on the 21st, possibly the middle of nowhere is the best place to be when the world ends! The edges of the Nullarbor do have trees but there is miles and miles of blank horizon. I got to see four camels and a dingo, which was quite exciting. We also stopped at a couple of 'towns', comprised of very small populations, for mail bags. We were allowed to get off at Cook, which is an absolute nowhere town, with a population of four. Since the privatisation of the railways, its fortunes have somewhat suffered... 

Cook

Nullarbor Plain

We also stopped at Kalgoorlie (or 'Kal' if you're a miner), which is solely a mining town of c. 32,000 people. I saw the 'Superpit' which is a ridiculously huge hole with ridiculously large trucks driving around it (about my understanding of mining). They have to pipe water 600km from Perth for it to survive, although it is only (!) 360km from the nearest water source. There is also a relatively high number of pubs and brothels here!

Finally pulled into Perth at 9.30am to be met by Izzy in her cycling kit. Very much worth the slightly less than comfortable sleep and I almost agree with Robert Louis Stephenson that 'I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.' I can definitely believe he said that before airports...