Home Sunday 10th November 2024: That As They Say is a Wrap!

After a wonderful excursion into the Blue Mountains, we boarded a local commuter train for the 64-mile journey into Sydney.  As we were approaching Sydney Central Station so the Indian Pacific, duly cleaned, serviced and boarded by the next group of guests, was departing for the return journey to Perth.

With the grey and overcast weather we have had in the UK over the last 10 days – I heard that since the 28^{th of} October there has been less than 18 minutes of sunshine(!) – I wish I was back in Australia. 

I hope you will all be able to join me again on the 25^th March 2025 when I shall return to Australia to ride the Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide and take a tour of Kangaroo Island and Tasmania.

Until then Au Revoir.

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 Off Train Experience in the Blue Mountains: Views from Echo Point



The final part of this excursion was to take the short drive from Scenic World to Echo Point a lookout about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of Katoomba. The lookout offers a view to Three Sisters, Mount Solitary and the rock formation known as the Ruined Castle.

The Three Sisters are an unusual rock formation on the north escarpment towering above the Jamison Valley which you can see behind in the photo. Their names are Meehni (922 m), Wimlah (918 m), and Gunnedoo (906m).

The Three Sisters were formed by land erosion around 200 million years ago during the Triassic period when the sandstone of the Blue Mountains was eroded over time by wind, rain and rivers, causing the cliffs surrounding the Valley to be slowly broken up.

The commonly told legend of the Three Sisters, according to Wikipedia, is that three sisters, Wimalah, Meeni, and Gunedoo, lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. They fell in love with three men from the neighbouring Nepean tribe, but marriage was forbidden by tribal law. The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to capture the three sisters. A major tribal battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder to protect them, but he was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back.

The third photo is towards the rock feature named the Ruined Castle.

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 Off Train Experience in the Blue Mountains: The Scenic Cableway Over The Temperate Rainforest

Here is a photo and facts about the Cableway from: https://www.scenicworld.com.au/how-things-work

 

SCENIC CABLEWAY

YEAR OF INSTALLATION: 2000

RIDE TIME: 8 minutes

RIDE DISTANCE: 510 metres

CAPACITY: 84 adults

SPEED: 5 metres per sec

DIFFERENCE IN ELEVATION: 216 metres

HORIZONTAL DISTANCE: 470 metres

 

The other photos show a first glimpse of the Three Sisters rock feature about which more in a later post and a view back and down from the Cableway over the Temperate Rainforest.

 

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 Off Train Experience in the Blue Mountains: A Walk Through The Katoomba Temperate Rainforest

The first part of this walk took us past a sculpture depicting a miner and pit pony and entrance to the ancient coal workings. You can see in one of the photos the grey coal and shale deposits between the sandstone. These were formed 245 to 290 million years ago when this area held vast swamps and deltas. Today, the landscape ranges from open forest and windswept heath, to hanging swamps that cling to the cliff face, and remnant rainforest in the spray zones of waterfalls.

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 Off Train Experience in the Blue Mountains: The Katoomba Scenic Railway

Sorry I have just reposted since I selected the wrong first photo for attachment.

 

If dangling 270 metres above a ravine wasn't enough of a thrill, the descent on the Katoomba Scenic Railway, the steepest funicular railway in the world, should satisfy your desire for an 'adrenalin rush' if that's your thing of course!

I was lucky to get the very front seat on this train and take a video of the whole 3-minute descent.  Sadly, as you may already know I have never been successful in uploading video to my Blog but hopefully the photos will give you some idea about this unique train journey.  Some of you may have seen a travel programme made by Micheal Portillo which featured this ride and televised from the seat in which I sat – just another of those quirky coincidences that have occurred in my travels this year.

The description that follows is from the Great Rail Journeys website: https://www.greatrail.com/trains/katoomba-scenic-railway/#:~:text=The%20historic%20Katoomba%20Scenic%20Railway,glass%20roofed%20red%20train%20carriage.

The historic Katoomba Scenic Railway is the steepest cable-driven funicular railway in the world, with an incline of 52 degrees. This unique journey is taken in an 84-seat glass roofed red train carriage. The train travels through sandstone cliffs, through a rock tunnel beside the tree covered Orphan Rock, before emerging to stunning panoramic views of the lush, ancient rainforest. 

The Railway was constructed in the 1880s to facilitate mining in the Jamison Valley, originally hauling coal and oil shale from the bottom of the valley up to the escarpment above. Locals soon began to see its potential as a tourist attraction, and from 1928 to 1945 the train was used for its intended purpose carrying coal during the week, with passengers using the train for leisure purposes at the weekends. After the coal mine was permanently closed in 1945 the Katoomba Scenic Railway remained open as a tourist attraction.  The track was modernised in 2013.

YEAR OF INSTALLATION: 

• 1878 - original, coal only
• 1928 - steam winch, 12 passengers
• 1935 – electric winch, 23 passengers
• 1952 – 23-28 passenger car
• 1974 – 28-56 passengers, two cars
• 1994 – 56 – 84 passengers, three cars
• 2013 – 84 passengers, four cars

You can just see the break between the rocks through which the train descends in the 4^th photo above.

 

 

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 Off Train Experience in the Blue Mountains: The Scenic Skyway

Opened in 1958 the Scenic Skyway was Australia's first cable car. The current Swiss-made cabin was launched in 2017 and can carry 84 passengers every 10 minutes. It is the largest aerial cable car in the Southern Hemisphere.

Suspended 270 metres above ancient ravines, breathtaking views of the rainforest canopy were revealed beneath our feet through the glass cabin floor.

This 720-metre journey provided views of the Katoomba Falls, the Three Sisters, Mt Solitary and the Jamison Valley.

It was a rather damp and misty morning, although it did clear later, so I only managed to get a photo of the Katoomba Falls and to avoid too much vertigo standing on the glass floor!

Day 9 Wednesday 9th October 2024: Day 4 On Train - The Blue Mountains

All too quickly my last morning on the Indian Pacific had arrived.  The day began with an excellent full breakfast individually cooked to order as the train slowly wound its way towards Katoomba.  This was the one part of the journey where, as I posted a while ago now, it was possible to get a photo of our two powerful locomotives as they rounded many curves. I left the train at Katoomba, or actually the station before, the name of which I have forgotten, to take "A Journey Through the Blue Mountains".  The Train and my cabin baggage continued to Sydney to arrive at 12.30pm local time and I after a wonderful Off-Train Experience in the Blue Mountains took a private charter train, a local commuter train with carriages reserved for our use, into Sydney Central Station to arrive around 3.30pm.

Everybody but everybody had said you must visit the Blue Mountains so,rather than arrange a separate tour out from Sydney I took advantage of this off train excursion that was included in the fare.

The following edited description of this experience is taken from the Journey Beyond website: https://www.journeybeyondrail.com.au/indian-pacific/indian-pacific-experience/off-train-experiences-indian-pacific/blue-mountains/

The Blue Mountains is a World Heritage-listed area ……with….rugged cliffs, forests and rock formations.

After disembarking the train our destination was Scenic World for four mountain experiences. The Scenic Skyway took us above ancient ravines, visible 270 metres below through the glass cabin floor. The vista was 360 degrees and featured the Three Sisters, the Jamison Valley and Katoomba Falls about which I will say more in later posts. Next, we boarded the Katoomba Scenic Railway, the steepest passenger railway in the world, to descend more than 500 metres to the valley floor before taking a guided walk through the forest and joining the Scenic Cableway to ascend back the Scenic World café. Finally, made the short drive to the Echo Point Lookout, perched on the edge of the escarpment in Katoomba for lunch before taking the train into Sydney.

Each of these experiences were unique so I'm going to post on each one in turn.

It was impossible to take a photo of the Scenic Skyway Gondola so, to act as a 'trailer', I have taken a shot of the Indian Pacific brochure describing the Off Train Experiences.

 

Day 8 Tuesday 8th October 2024: Day 3 On Train - A Fleeting Glance of Broken Hill



Around 5.30pm the train arrived in Broken Hill described in my DK Eyewitness Guide to Australia as "the unofficial centre of the outback New South Wales. Broken Hill is a mining town perched on the edge of the deserts of inland Australia".   The town was established in 1883, when vast deposits if zinc, lead and silver were discovered in a 4 mile long "Line of Lode" by the then fledgling company Broken Hill PTY Ltd and has since grown into a major town and BHP has become Australia's biggest Corporation.

Broken Hill's now declining mining industry is still evident, slag heaps, or mullocks' as they are known locally,  are everywhere, and the streets are named after metals. The DK Guide informs me that 'the town's gritty character and barren surroundings have inspired many artists' and today there are over 20 art galleries featuring the work of these local desert artists.

The origin of the town's name is interesting. In 1844, the explorer Charles Sturt saw and named the Barrier Range, and at the time referred to a "Broken Hill" in his diary. The broken hill that gave its name to the town consisted of several hills that appeared to have a break in them. This broken hill no longer exists, having been mined away!!  Reminiscent of the 'Lookout Hill' at Kalgoorlie that I mentioned in a previous post as being prepared to be 'mined away'!

There are two interesting buildings shown in one of the photos above.  The first on the extreme left of the photo is the dramatic Line of Lode Miner's Memorial. The NSW Government Tourist website describes this "striking architecturally designed memorial,…. opened in 2001, has the name of each (Of the 800) miners who perished (over the years) etched into freestanding glass panels within the high, rust-red steel walls'. This website goes on to describe the  "spectacular views from the summit of the gigantic hill or mullock on which the memorial is built (in essence a 30m-high pile of mining waste material)". The other building on this 'mullock' is the Broken Earth Restaurant with the 'wing roof' again offering amazing panoramic views over the town.

A final interesting fact is that the extensive daily hours of sunshine in the town made it ideal for Solar Energy generation and in 2016 a 53-Megawatt solar farm was completed - one of the largest at the time in Australia.

As we slowly negotiated our way through Broken Hill, I reflected on the fact that in this year alone I had flown directly over the town on my outward and return flights from New Zealand and would do so again on my return from Sydney, so, no longer just a name that came up on the flight path displayed in the aircraft.

 

Day 8 Tuesday 8th October 2024: Day 3 On Train - Adelaide - A Scenic Drive n the Adelaide Hills

It was just after 7.00am local time that we pulled into Adelaide Parklands Terminal the home of the Indian Pacific, The Ghan, The Great Southern and The Overland trains operated by Journey Beyond.  Today the crew would change, having completed their week aboard and the train would be cleaned and serviced ready for our departure on the last leg of our journey to Sydney.  Whilst these activities were taking place, we had a choice of five Off Train Experiences to choose from, all of which included breakfast!

The choices were:

1. The Central Market
2. City Sights
3. Adelaide Oval
4. Adelaide Hills Scenic Drive
5. City and River Precinct Walk

Since I will be returning to Australia at the end of March 2025 to ride The Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide and my itinerary includes some days in Adelaide, I chose to join the Adelaide Hills Scenic Drive, figuring that I can visit the more central city sights on my return.

My destination this morning was the Mount Lofty Summit Café, 710 metres above sea level and Adelaide's highest peak. So, the promise of a glass of sparkling wine and the chance to sample a range of local produce from local seasonal fruits - the strawberries were delicious – to ham & cheese croissants and vanilla bean yoghurt all taken against the backdrop of spectacular views, was tempting. There was only one snag – there was a biting cold wind and no sunshine, so venturing out from the Café to take some photos, was brief affair, to say the least.

Mount Lofty,  elevation 2,330 ft is the highest point in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges. It is located 15 km (9.3 miles) east of the city centre, within the Adelaide Hills. The summit did indeed offer panoramic views of the city although this morning the view was slightly obscured by mist.

Mount Lofty was named by Captain Mathew Flinders on 23 March 1802 during his circumnavigation of the Australian continent.  Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.

A stone cairn at the summit was originally erected as a 'trig point' but in 1885 this was replaced by an obelisk (See photo) which served as the central reference point for surveying purposes across Adelaide. In 1902 the obelisk was renamed the "Flinders Column".

After a fulfilling and enjoyable breakfast, we took the coach back down the mountain to Adelaide. In a previous post, now some 4 weeks ago, I mentioned that our route was through a forested area with a healthy population of Koalas. You may recall the photo I attached of a 'grey furry blob' in the trees!  Luckily, as you will have seen I took some rather better photos of Koalas at Taronga Zoo and at the Sydney Wildlife Centre.

Back on the train by midmorning we were soon on our way and as we departed the 'sister train' the Ghan was pulling into the Parklands Terminal at the end of its journey from Darwin.

Day 7 Monday 7th October 2024: Day 2 On Train - A Stop on the Outback at Cook

 The Photos:

1. A view of the outback from Cook
2. The school from the abandoned and filled in swimming pool
3. A water tower commemorating the men who built the railway
4. Sign recording the linking of the Trans Australian lines in 1917
5. Cook Queen City on the longest stretch of straight track
6. If your Crook come to Cook!

 

It was around 2.00pm that we came to halt in Cook for the train to take on fresh water and for a change of driving crew.

Cook is 1138 kilometres from Adelaide and 1523 from Perth.  The closest road is the Eyre Highway, 100 kilometres to the south.  The nearest major town is Ceduna, about a five-hour drive south-east and the local doctor is a 12-hour drive away at Port Augusta – have a look at the map of the Eyre Highway in my previous post.

Cook was named after a former Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Cook and was established to support the east-west Trans Australian Railway, which was completed in 1917.  To support the maintenance of the line, small settlements 30 kilometres apart were built along the most remote sections of the track on the Nullarbor Plain and prior to 1996 the aptly named 'Tea and Sugar Train' supplied provisions to these settlements.

The families of the workers constructing the Trans-Australian Railway depended on this train, that began in 1915, for every necessity. The provisions were supplied by two single-purpose weekly trains, the eastbound counterpart being known as "The Bomber".  Sheep were brought on the train, which had its own butcher. There was a car that allowed railway families to view the latest films while the train was in the siding and it also included a welfare car staffed by a nurse. In fact, each time the train crossed the Nullarbor Plain, it included carriages to suit the different needs of residents throughout the year. On some trains there was a bank car, which allowed residents to make financial transactions and a post office car. In December even Santa brought presents in a Christmas car.

Today, the relationship between Cook and the Indian Pacific remains just as important, in maintaining the supply of food and goods in return for fuel and water.

Cook, therefore, was once a thriving community with a school, swimming pool, golf course, general store and housing to support a 200-strong population but after the privatisation of the railway, the numbers dwindled, leaving the town with only a handful of residents today. 

We had an hour-or-so to explore Cook.  It was a bright sunny afternoon and warm afternoon as we were left to explore the many abandoned buildings.  The few residents remaining in Cook who were only too pleased to 'pass the time of day' with whomever wanted a chat.

 

 

 

Day 7 Monday 7th October 2024: Day 2 On Train - Crossing the Nullarbor Plain & A Tale of Wombat Spotters



After a pretty good night's sleep I had the blinds up early in my cabin to watch the sunrise over the Nullarbor Plain. It took all day until around 17.00hrs local time to traverse this hot, barren plateau twice the size of England but we made a stop around 2.00pm at the small outback town located on the longest straight stretch of track in the world that spans a distance of 478.

More about Cook in a later post.

Some Facts About the Nullarbor

Wikipedia informs me that the name Nullarbor Plain derives from the Latin: nulla feminine of nullus 'no' and arbor' tree so 'treeless area' located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, and occupies an area of about 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi). At its widest point, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres (684 mi) from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.

The Trans-Australian Railway  line crosses the Nullarbor Plain from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta. Construction of the line began in 1917, when two teams set out from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Port Augusta in South Australia, meeting in the centre of the Plain at Ooldea, an uninhabited area noted for a water supply. This original line suffered severe problems with track flexing and settling in the desert sands so, the line was entirely rebuilt in 1969, as part of a project to standardise disparate rail gauges in the various Australian states.  The first crossing of the Nullarbor on the new line reached Perth on 27 February 1970.

The Nullarbor is also crossed by the Eyre Highway, which connects Norseman in Western Australia to Port Augusta, was carved across the continent in 1941 (See map below). At first it was little more than a rough track but was gradually metalled over the next thirty years. The final section was tarred in 1976. Unlike the railway it crosses the plain at its southernmost edge rather than through the centre. The highway is named after Edward John Eyre, who In 1840–1841, was the first European to traverse the coastline of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullarbor Plain by land, on a 2,000-mile trip from Adelaide to Albany, Western Australia

 

The Eyre Highway

Map of South Australia and southern Western Australia with Eyre Highway highlighted in red

 

 

The railway line has the longest straight section of railway in the world (478 km; 297 mi), while the Eyre Highway has the longest straight section of tarred road in Australia (146 km; 91 mi).

The Nullarbor and Meteorites

The Nullarbor has extensive meteorite deposits, which have been extremely well preserved in the arid climate.

The first photo above taken at 8.46am is of a Meteorite Detection Station of which there are three set out in a triangular formation over a large area of the Nullarbor.

The 2^nd Photo was taken just after dawn and my first view of the Nullarbor Plain.  My last view of the Nullarbor came at around 5.00pm when the landscape changed dramatically, almost as if a line had been drawn, to the more savannah like vegetation shown in the 3^rd Photo.

More Coincidences

You know how I like a good coincidence and here are two about other travellers in my acquaintance who have traversed the Nullarbor.

The first friends, are of course Lesley and Bob who in June drove from Sydney to their new home in Perth. I seem to remember they took a route along the coast since they send me the 4^th Photo of the German Bight coast at a spot famous for whale watching.

My second Nullarbor traveller is a neighbour whom I met on the morning of my return home as he was walking his dog.  He told me that as a young man he had hitched a lift across the Nullarbor in a car/truck but he had to do so with his head out of the window at night to spot Wombats!!  You will recall from my photo of a sleeping Wombat at the Sydney Wildlife Centre that they are rather large and solid animals akin to our native Badgers. His driver's comment had been "if we hit one of those mate, we are a goner!'

 

Day 6 Sunday 6th October 2024: Day 1 On Train Kalgoorlie - Mines, Big Pits & CATs?!



As I mentioned in my last post the main reason for the halt at Kalgoorlie was for an Off-Train Experience entitled "Paddy Hannan's Ounce of Luck, Tales from the Golden Mile".  Unfortunately, because the Indian Pacific was late in arriving the programme was heavily contracted and resulted in mildly amusing chaos where in the end for me the highlight was an opportunity to get 'close up and personal' with some Big CATs?! 

The Experience began with a short coach tour through the centre of Kalgoorlie enroute to Hannan's North Tourist Mine where we were due to see a short play performed by local artists highlighting the tales of the Golden Mile and the Kalgoorlie gold rush.  The play mysteriously transformed into some story telling by an Aborigine elder and his son.  With only 10 minutes available the story lost much of its mystery and emotion which was a great shame but we did get a rendition of an Aborigine folk song accompanied by his son playing the Digeridoo.

We were then ushered out of the hall and told that we had 15 minutes to have a look at the two monster CAT (Caterpillar) machines shown in the photos and visit the Gift Shop before boarding the bus for our visit to the Super Pit.

The Haul Truck and the Bulldozer (Known locally as the Wheel Loader) are used to transport rock from the bottom of the Pit up to the ore crushing and refining facilities at the 'surface'.  If you haven't had a look at the photo links in my last post let me give you some idea of the dimensions of the Super Pit.  This link shows an aerial view of the Pit: https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/infrastructure-projects/kalgoorlie-super-pit

The following description has been created from this website. The Kalgoorlie Super Pit is a gold mine also known as the Fimiston open pit. It's a rectangular open pit mine approximately 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and 600m deep and is big enough to be seen from space.

The Super Pit was the biggest open gold mine in Australia until 2016, when it was surpassed by the Boddington mine, also in western Australia.

The first gold strike in Kalgoorlie was in 1893. It was followed by the development of many small mines – some of which struggled to make money. All the mines on the site were eventually bought out by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) in 1989 – creating the Super Pit.

The Super Pit produces around 800,000 ounces of gold a year – around 8% of Australia's total gold output.

The area - known as the Golden Mile - has produced approximately 58m ounces of gold since the first strike by prospector Paddy Hannan in 1893.

The Golden Mile was the fifth largest gold producing region in the world in 2014. Australia is currently the second biggest gold producer in the world – China is the first.

We were told that the plan over the next year is to expand the size of the pit. The whole hill on which the Lookout currently sits is to be excavated with the result that many businesses on the entry road will also be bulldozed as part of this expansion.

The Super Pit is credited with making a major contribution to the local economy. It employs over 1,100 people and around 30% of the mine's suppliers are companies in the Kalgoorlie area.

The structure is also a leading tourist attraction, with thousands of visitors every year – bringing revenue to the area.

Mining engineers working at the Kalgoorlie Super Pit face unique challenges. The mine is on top of a network of more than 3,500km of historical workings, stretching 1,200m below the surface.

The historical workings are known as voids – no other open pit in the world has so many. All of them need to be navigated safely for the mine to produce gold.

Engineers use historical plans and drilling data as well as laser technology to check for voids beneath the surface.

You can read more on this link about how the gold is mined and processed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Pit_gold_mine

The Caterpillar 'Haul Truck' on display is an old 793C version.  It could haul 240 tons of gold bearing rock and nickel from the bottom of the pit at a time. The latest 797 version, now in use can carry 400 tons!!  Each truck can cost up to $5,000,000 or so I read?!  The bucket on the 'Wheel Loader' can handle 45tons of rock ore at a time, taking 5 or so passes to fill one of the Haul Trucks. Again, the newer versions can handle bigger payloads and raise the buckets to higher levels.

Eventually we got bussed up to the Super Pit Lookout but for some reason the Mine Authorities had switched off the lighting at the Look Out – hardly surprising since it was 10.30pm by the time we arrived.  Too late and too dangerous for us to get out of the coach so we all but briefly saw the glimmer of the Haul Truck lights as they wound their way up the pit. We were told that women are the preferred drivers of these giant trucks because they are less impulsive.

On the drive back to the train through a deserted and almost ghost like Kalgoorlie our lady driver explained that prior to Covid the town had thrived not only because of the mine but the tourists visiting the Super Pit Look Out and Hannan's North Tourist Mine.  Many of the local hotels, pubs, bars and shops had closed during the Covid lock down and proprietors had moved away.  The town is only now slowly recovering.

So came to end a slightly chaotic experience as we re-boarded the Indian Pacific at 11.00pm and were swiftly on our way into the night and commencing our crossing of the Nullarbor Plain.