The Ghan railway
... as rail travel goes this is the
world's best-known train ride

4 days - 3 nights

Travelers now ride in comfort through the Outback to "the Alice" your gateway to the mysterious Ayers Rock (Uluru), Olgas rock formations, Kings Canyon and Northern Territory.

The connection between Melbourne and Adelaide is an early morning departure on the newly refurbished Overland train... Your journey from Melbourne to Darwin will take 4 days and you'll travel 3745 km. (2322 miles)

You will have an overnight stop over in Adelaide (at own expense), a city of elegant buildings ringed by parklands. The Ghan departs the following day, early in the evening and you travel in air conditioned comfort as the day turns to night.

It's dark as you reach the halfway point of the journey, Port Augusta. All trains stop here - even the Indian Pacific traveling from Sydney or Melbourne to Perth on the other side of the continent.

The starkly beautiful, unforgiving landscape of the Outback is the prime attraction when taking this 20 hour, 1559 km (972-mile) trip... you'll pass mountain ranges, the Murray River and dry creek beds... You'll cross the red-baked earth of the Simpson Desert and endless acres of flat empty scrub... A single dirt road parallels the train tracks, but to see even one vehicle is a rarity.

There are no sightseeing stops en route, but a commentary - sometimes live, sometimes taped - describes the history and the passing landscape, with an occasional interruption for major news flashes, such as... "Australia just won the one day cricket series with 180 runs."... The Ghan Museum, in a resorted Outback station just outside Alice Springs, displays a collection of original rolling stock and memorabilia from Australia's pioneering railway days.

Heading out of Alice Springs, you'll pass aboriginal camps and then emptiness... The power of the desert lies in its' awe inspiring sense of space. Timeless horizons extend as far as the eye can see, and emptiness which endows even the most mundane objects with a sense of importance.

You travel overnight to arrive just after breakfast in Katherine, about 200km south of Darwin, where tours of Nitmiluk National Park's famous gorges are available by boat or helicopter. A two hour cruise upriver will give you a taste of this natural wonder. Dizzying monoliths of rose, ochre and charcoal rock plunge into quicksilver water so dark and deep and rich with nutrients that 40 species of fish reside here, as well as freshwater crocodiles. At the cliff summits, craggy rock formations brood like carved saints atop some Roman monument.

Departing Katherine at midday, you'll arrive in Darwin in the late afternoon.