From Melbourne I departed for Adelaide, where I spent a couple of days researching the best way to get to Perth. No backpackers seemed to be arranging rideshares so I had to turn to public transportation, which did not exactly present a wide variety of options. The only chances to cross the desert proved to be by train and by plane, both costing around $200AU. Because I by far prefer overland travel over flying, I booked a trip on the Indian-Pacific railway, taking about 40 hours and costing $219AU. This was the cheapest fare available and secured me a rather comfortable day-nighter seat in the Red (third) Class. The train departed from Adelaide after dark, and arrived two days later in the morning to Perth.
As the 700-meter, 25-car long train slowly chugged across the vast emptiness of the Nullarbor plains, a thousand-kilometer slab of limestone covered by low scrub lying between Southern and Western Australia, I marveled from the carriage window the monotonous landscape of low-lying bush and sand. It stopped on the way in the deserted railway workers' town of Cook, and in the Australian goldmining capital, Kalgoorlie. During the stop in Kalgoorlie yours truly and some of the other backpackers from the train sought out a local pub and spent the three-hour stop comfortably listening to music from the local country-version of MTV and filling our bellies, as the food on board the train was, as was to be expected, rather dear.
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| Sunset from a bus window on the way from Melbourne to Adelaide. |
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| The Indian Pacific refueling at Cook. |
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| A typical view from the train window. |
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| A Cook town signpost. |
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