The Indian Pacific to Adelaide

I had booked a cabin on a very expensive train from Sydney to Adelaide called the Indian Pacific back in November, and had since then been trying to justify the cost. But to heck with it! - besides I'd never been on a luxury train journey before.
The Indian Pacific train, runs between the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. The route used to comprise of a number of different gauges so a journey on the same train was not possible until 1970 when the gauges were converted to one standard, the Indian Pacific was the first train to travel the whole route. There are 3 classes, I was in Gold class in a single cabin.
I had spent a couple of nights in Coogee in Sydney at a lovely airbnb. It was hair drier hot in Sydney, after a walk along the coast I went to Wylie's baths on the waterfront, a sea water pool, which was splendid. My airbnb host, Sean, kindly gave me a lift to the train station where the Indian Pacific had it's own check in booth.

Wylie's Baths at Coogee

Looking towards Coogee beach

The train is in two parts in the station and hooks up when it departs because it's so long, a very nicely dressed crew member directed me to the Gold lounge where guest could have drinks whilst we waited for access to our cabins, it was an open bar. At 2pm we were allowed to check into our cabins, I was turbo excited about this.

I was turbo excited for probably at least 10 minutes after getting my cabin, opening every cubby hole and just marvelling at how ingenious the space was.

Double cabin and super fun snaking single cabin corridors

My room!

Cabin in bed formation, and the clever sink that folds away.



The Gold lounge

The lounge was open the whole time for drinks and nibbles, one of the crew members came to each cabin after the train left to take dinner time reservations. At dinner I was sat with an American lady and a couple made up of an Australian woman who was stuck on transmit and a quiet serene Dutchman who didn't feel like eating anything, despite this she ordered his food for him and then tutted when he didn't want to eat it. I was quite hungry and had eaten all my food, so asked if I could have his soup, he said yes, so I ate his soup while the Australian woman went on about bad everything was and that she had been on a 12 day train journey in Europe and it had cost $25'000, and she'd been on this train journey and that train journey and blah de blah..... she was mainly talking at the lady opposite from the states, I was glad of this. She made me think - I should never get used to this luxury, otherwise it will loose everything that's special about it and you no longer appreciate it.

During dinner service the crew had turned my cabin seat into a bed. More excitement. I was tired from all the excitement and went to bed somewhere past the Blue Mountains.

When I woke up the landscape was proper outback red earth Australia. Baby Roo had finally come home. We had an excursion at Broken Hill, a mining town which involved getting up at 6am as the train was due to arrive at 6.30.

Baby Roo looking out of the cabin window

 

In Broken Hill we had a choice of excursions, one to the minors memorial and one to a local artist called Pro Hart. I thought Broken Hill was going to be a couple of big sheds and bits of old mining clutter but it's a town of 19000 people. I went to the art gallery, think Lowry + Dali and you get Pro Hart. I thought it was brilliant.

 

Painted Rolls at the Pro Hart gallery

 

After the excursion we had breakfast, I sat with Diane, a nice lady from Seattle and a sweet lady from Perth.

 

At breakfast with Diane from Seattle

And then there was nothing else to do but enjoy the journey until lunch time and arriving in Adelaide. It was quite strange, a number of people of the train reminded me of other people, I felt like Dorothy quite literally in Oz.

A wonderful journey, and totally worth it.