The Train from Perth to Sydney(Perth)
I had tried to make reservations nine months early to get a single berth on the Indian Pacific train that travels from Perth to Sydney but was instead put on the waitlist. I wanted to do the train trip as a way to see some of the interior of Australia and also because I had never done a multi-day train trip before and I was interested to explore that means of travel. Consequently I was super excited to get a notice in January, about two months before the scheduled departure, that I had a berth on the train. Well it turned out to be an interesting trip on many levels.
The instructions were to arrive at the East Perth train terminal no later than two hours before the departure time of 6pm. I checked out of my hotel, spent some time in the lobby writing up my previous blog post, went off to have lunch and ended up showing up at the station to check in for the train around 2:30pm. it is a good thing that I got there early because they did not have a cabin assignment for me in their system, even though I had a reservation. Also there was some question about whether our train would make it through to Sydney due to track flooding just outside of Adelaide. It turns out both issues were connected– because of the track flooding the train had been stuck in Perth for the pervious five days and thus the two additional single berth cars required to fill the manifest were not available (they were in Adelaide). All of the local passengers had been canceled but the handful of us that were international were maintained. But when the transferred us over, we did not get cabin assignments; something happened in their system. By the way, apparently the rain they were getting was creating flooding at a level they had not seen since the 1970s (sound familiar- read my New Zealand South Island posts), so clearly I jinxed the trip.
After explaining the situation and ensuring that I did, indeed, have a cabin, the train representative went on to explain that they were going to run the trip, but were not sure if the flooding would recede enough for the tracks to be passable when we arrived and if that was the case, they would be returning us to Perth and would fly us to our final destination. (At this point some passengers opted to cancel with a full refund.). Since I was in it to see the outback and to have an adventure and they were going to make sure I got to Sydney regardless, I told them I would go. They sent me down to their welcome reception to have drinks and food while they worked on the cabin issue and eventually I got my cabin and we boarded. The adventure was starting early!
My single berth cabin. The table folds down and the bed folds out from the left wall laying just below the bottom window sill. There was also a small sink for washing and brushing my teeth.
My single cabin was very cozy but had room enough for my needs. The bed folded down from the left wall and spanned the whole width of the cabin, which served as a sitting room during the day. I only travel with a duffle bag and a backpack so space for luggage was not an issue; mine fit neatly under the center table and one of the seats. (Those with more luggage checked their large bags in and only took small carry-on bags to their rooms.). Our carriage, which was all single berths, shared four toilets and two showers, which was never a problem. I was actually surprised how big the bathrooms were, especially the shower.
Four carriages shared a lounge car which was the main social hub, containing lots of viewing windows and the bar. The dining car was just beyond the lounge car and we had allocated time slots to eat as everyone could not be accommodated at once. We had a “cruise director” assigned to our four cars and it was her responsibility to make sure we all knew what was going on and troubleshoot problems. The interesting thing was that we, the passengers, were grouped into “pods”. For example, I could not walk the full length of the train, which was about half a mile long, because aft beyond our dining car was a kitchen carriage, staff quarters, a mechanical carriage (electronics and HVAC, I think) probably a water tank carriage etc.. before getting to the next section of passengers. Logically this kind of arrangement makes sense (and also allows them to separate the different classes of passengers….).
The lounge car. Social hub for our “pod”.
The planned itinerary had a stop everyday at a different destination with different choices for excursions. In practice, only our first day worked out that way because of the uncertainty around track accessibility. They were constantly changing our scheduled stops trying to time our arrival to the flooded area such that the teams there had the longest amount of time to get the tracks cleared. That timing, along with the duty day constraints of the train operator, threw our planned itinerary out the window from the start. But we did make our first stop, in Kalgoorie, the site of Australia’s largest open pit mine (gold) and the one excursion I did not want to miss– an in depth tour.
Kalgoorie is a small town, around 30,000 people, that is, and has been, a mining hub for gold for over a hundred years, serving not only the Fimiston Open pit just on the outskirts of town, but the whole region and network of mines for miles around. The town still retains its original architecture making me feel like we had traveled back in time as the bus took us down Main Street on the way to the mine. The Fimiston Open pit mine, also known as the “superpit” was formed when four smaller open pit mines were consolidated. The pit is huge, 3.5km long, 1.6km wide and currently 675m deep (that will go to 800m) and branching off of the open pit into a labyrinth underground are shafts that go to 1.2km depths. The scale of the operation is hard to believe and one of the reasons I was looking forward to the tour was to learn more about mining and how it is managed and what is involved.
Before we got to the mine itself we stopped at the local mining museum where they had tea, coffee and pastries waiting while we roamed around to get some background. I found a short film that described a typical day and rhythm for the mine operators and spent most of the short time we had there absorbing that information. They also had a monster dump truck on display, an up close way to appreciate the scale of what we were about to see. The tires were taller than any of us by quite a bit! I found out later that they cost about $6M (Australian) and can haul 245 tons of rock- and they go through tires pretty quickly!
The monster dump truck. HUGE!
After visiting the museum we headed to the mine site. Our tour took us onto the grounds and we were driven past different areas of the mine and were able to get out of the bus at two different look out sites to view the pit and the activity that was happening. The monster trucks, up close, looked like matchbox toys from the lookout points high above the floor of the mine. I sat near the front of the bus and pretty much peppered the driver with questions (when he was not talking)– poor guy– everything from logistics to technical to environmental. It was fascinating!! Just a couple of interesting facts:
- They get about 1.3 grams of gold per ton of rock. Average take is 450kg gold/year (roughly).
- They use groundwater from the water table for their processing. The ground water is seven times more salty than the ocean so they have to desalinate. (Fresh water for population consumption is piped in from Perth.
- They are doing land reclamation and have projects going back as far as 50 years and are still experimenting on methods.
- They have 11 years of tailings built up to process- building a new processing mill.
- Australia has a “fly in/fly out” contract employment process for workers in the outback (not just in the mines)- the workers are provided food, housing etc and work intense several week shifts then are off.
- The trucks all have drivers. Some remote/robotics operations happen when drilling new tunnels. Samples are taken to sort out where the gold vein is running and exact measurements are provided on where to continue a shaft.
- Maintenance is constant and the infrastructure to keep the mine operating is impressive.
I could go on but will stop there.
Big picture view of the superset. The small tunnel openings on the lower right allowed the trucks to get down to the shafts to remove newly mined tunnel rock.
A close up of the “roads” that the trucks wound up after emerging from the mine shafts. Recall the size of those trucks from the earlier picture…
After leaving Kalgoorie, our next stop was supposed to be Broken Hill, but that stop was in the flooded zone. Instead we stopped in Rawlina, population 33 (no kidding), which had been an old mining town but died when the mines shut down. The people that live there now run a sheep station. They get their mail from the train and the closest town is Kalgoorie, a five hour drive; it’s the very definition of remote! At this point we were well onto the Nullarbor Plain and the semi-arid landscape, dotted with small trees and various bushes had completely given way to flat plains and short grasses that stretched off in all directions. What I saw before me was my imagination of the Australian outback… At Rawlina, we had a “dining under the stars” but since it was still late afternoon, the sun was still up. For some reason the train had switched from Perth time to Adelaide time between Kalgoorie and Rawlina so the clocks/timing was strange. At this point it was still unknown whether the tracks would be passable.
We woke up in the morning at Cook, which was also in the middle of nowhere in the Nullarbor train and existed as an outpost for crew transfer. Our Perth train operators had to be swapped out with new ones. We sat there a bit while, I suspect, the team was trying to sort whether we could get through because we eventually got an announcement that we were headed back to Perth. Everyone in our pod took that announcement well as we all knew it would be a possibility and the company worked really hard to accommodate schedules and get logistics set up so that individual plans would not be upset. We ended up returning to Perth and they put us up in a hotel the night before our flights to Sydney. I arrived in Sydney more or less the same time/day that I would have on the train.
My overall takeaway: I had approached the train trip as a “land cruise”. And it is in some ways, but also is not in significant ways. Specifically, on a ship you have a lot more room to walk around and I missed being able to just move. Living space is tighter on the train (not unsurprisingly) but that did not bother me. It is hard to judge how much having the ability to get off the train at each planned stop and experience each excursion would have changed my impressions. So would I do it again? Maybe…. But, regardless of the outcome, it was an adventure, I met a lot of interesting people, and I am glad I did it.
What a fun adventure! I’ve only traveled in trains for day trips Europe but always enjoyed them; the mine (and output of gold per ton!) is interesting 🙂