South on The Ghan 2: Alice Springs to Adelaide

Last time I wrote about the first leg of my journey on The Ghan transcontinental train, from Darwin to Katherine. The journey continues below...

1. Interior Comforts. Time for some more shots of the train's interior, I think. Here's the Queen Adelaide dining car, followed by the Outback Explorer bar:

2. A Station Like Alice. The morning after we'd left Katherine, we arrived in Alice Springs. I'd last been here for the Alice Desert Festival (read about my experience here), but arrived by plane of course.

In the centre of Australia, this was the original terminus of The Ghan's route, which ran north from Adelaide. It wasn't until 2004 that the line was extended the additional 1500 kilometres to Darwin.

You can see a statue of one of the Afghan camel drivers who gave their name to the train here, at Alice Springs Station:

3. The Old Ghan. Although the railway linking Alice Springs and Adelaide dates from the 1920s, its route has changed over the years. Nowadays the standard gauge line runs a long way west of the original route, which was prone to flooding and other mishaps.

The original line is remembered at the National Road Transport Hall of Fame just outside Alice Springs, which incorporates the Old Ghan Train Railway Museum. Located on a stretch of track from the original rail route, the two museums hold an interesting mix of road and rail transport, including earlier Ghan rolling stock:

4. Empty Spaces. After we left Alice Springs, there were a lot of scenes like this out of my cabin window - flat empty desert with scrubby vegetation and distinctive red earth. At some point here we crossed the border into South Australia, but the scenery looked much the same:

5. Pichi Richi Diversion. About 9am Friday morning, some 66 hours after leaving Darwin, we arrived in Port Augusta. Here we left the train for an excursion on the Pichi Richi Railway, a tourist operation which runs original Ghan carriages over a section of the earlier route to the town of Quorn.

This isn't a usual side-trip for Ghan passengers. This edition of The Ghan was a special train commemorating Anzac Day, Australia and New Zealand's national war remembrance day, and supporting the Returned & Services League.

The Ghan played a huge role in transporting troops north during the dark days of World War II and the Japanese air attacks on Darwin and other northern settlements, hence the military connection. Those troops rode on the tracks which pass through Quorn, and I was told the Country Women's Association outpost near the station served a million meals to soldiers during the course of the conflict.

Here's a pic of the train in motion through the low dry hills leading to Quorn, and a shot of the engine at rest in the town:

6. Terminus. Finally, after nearly 3000 kilometres of rail and 74 hours since we left Darwin, we arrived in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. And all without changing our watches, crossing a national border or producing a passport even once:

Disclosure time... On this trip I travelled courtesy of Great Southern Rail.

A Festival Like Alice 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm currently in Alice Springs for the annual Alice Desert Festival. I'd already done some dot painting and taken in an outdoor premiere of a new play; now here's what happened the next day.

Music in the gorge

The dry weather around Alice obviously makes it easy to schedule outdoor events. Match it with the Territorians' willingness to drive long distances for a day trip, and you have a 272km round trip to Ormiston Gorge to see the local choir Asante Sana perform in a spectacular location.

It was well worth the drive. The gorge is a fantastic place, with a sheer wall of craggy red rock looming over a watercourse lined by a broad stretch of sand on each side. The effect is that of an inland beach in a larger than life setting.

The choir were good too, starting off with a brace of African songs and then heading into more general material.

The highlight of the afternoon, though, was the cameo appearance of tenor Boyd Owen, who performed a powerful operatic aria which resounded through the beautiful space. And he did it in bare feet too, something he noted as a personal first.

Bush food on the menu

Back in Alice that evening, the Wild Bushfoods Gala Dinner featured the skills of chef Andrew Fielke, cooking several courses composed of bush foods presented in a modern style.

Outside the ballroom of the Crowne Plaza, we sampled canapes including crocodile spare ribs, and saltbush and whiting fritters.

Then, seated at the tables within, we were served dishes such as yabby bisque with coconut lemon myrtle foam; barramundi with pencil yam and leek gratin; slow roast camel scotch fillet with pepperleaf potato gnocchi; and this dish, braised kangaroo tail and seared kangaroo filet mignon with bush banana and brown butter:

Dessert, in case you're wondering, was sugar bag honey parfait and coolamon tuile, with wattleseed and Ferrero Rocher ripple gelato. Sweet.

[Read the previous Alice Desert Festival instalment here]

For more details of the Alice Desert Festival, click here. Disclosure time: On this trip I was hosted by Tourism NT.

A Festival Like Alice 1

I'm on my very first visit to the Northern Territory, and I've gone right to the centre of Australia - Alice Springs. In a few hours on Thursday morning I was transported from a chilly tram stop on Bourke Street, Melbourne, to the hot dry red-dust environment of Alice Springs. And all without producing a passport.

I'm primarily here as a guest of the Alice Desert Festival, an annual week of cultural events which this year runs from 9 to 18 September. Alice may be a small town but as it rarely rains here, it gives the festival organisers great scope in staging outdoor events in spectacular locations.

Joining the dots

But more of the outdoors later. The first thing I attended was actually a low-key indoor event at the Ngurratjuta Art Centre. It's a fairly humble place, being tucked away at the back of a building in an industrial part of town. Within its grounds, however, is an impressive art gallery showcasing watercolour work by local Aboriginal painters.

The centre's workshop is open to indigenous artists to use for free, including materials, with the centre taking a commission from art sold. The centre has a particular goal of encouraging the continuation of the style of artwork made famous by Albert Namatjira, and I noticed the surname 'Namatjira' on some of the artists' lockers around the walls.

The festival session invited visitors to try either watercolour painting or dot painting for ourselves; and of course we all chose the dot painting. Having been shown how to make dots of various sizes using either wooden skewers or the end of a paint brush, we were then reminded that it wasn't an abstract exercise - the works should tell a story.

Here's my first effort, not bad for a beginner I thought:

And if you're wondering what the story is - it involves a group of wild camels I encountered on the road to Hermannsburg the previous day (can you spot them in the art?). Here's a pic from real life:

Olive and pink by sunset

For my second festival event, I walked through a river to get to the venue. To be precise, it was the dry riverbed of the Todd River, and it was the quickest route from my hotel to the Olive Pink Botanic Garden, where the play The First Garden was being premiered.

You may reasonably assume that 'Olive Pink' refers to the colours of vegetation or landscape, but in fact she was an early Aboriginal rights activist and former anthropologist who decided to create a garden of native plants in Alice Springs, with the help of Warlpiri man Johnny Tjampitjinpa.

She lived within the park until her death at 1975, aged 91. She was a remarkable and strong-willed woman whose life story is well worth reading.

The compact cast of three actors (playing five characters) did a great job of portraying the high points of her life within the reserve, though delivery tended to the melodramatic at times, due to the necessity of projecting as clearly as possible in an open space.

Natasha Raja, co-writer of the play with Christopher Raja, convincingly portrayed both Pink's force of character and her stubborn refusal to be beholden to anyone; while Scott Fraser neatly cast light on her personality as both down-to-earth helper Henry Wardlaw and the ghost of her would-be fiancee who was killed at Gallipoli.

Also impressive was Eshua Bolton, an indigenous actor originally from New South Wales, who ranged from the youthful excesses of the young boy Tasman to the calm and thoughtful personality of Tjampitjinpa.

The setting, of course, was perfect - gum trees, bird calls, and a bluff of pink rock rising up behind the set with its humble hut. Remarkably, I was told afterward that the section of the garden in which the play was being staged was roughly the area in which Olive Pink had lived. I wonder what she would have made of it?

Next: Choral voices in a gorge, and bush foods for dinner... [Read the next instalment here]

The First Garden continues to 25 September; for more details of the Alice Desert Festival, click here. Disclosure time: On this trip I was hosted by Tourism NT.