The Day has finally arrived

Today started with an early morning rise after a not so great sleep overnight as Dave tossed and turned all night. He does this every time we leave somewhere thinking he will sleep through the alarms (by 2) we have set!

Up and had breakfast looking out over the Darwin bay one last time before packing the last of our stuff and giving the unit a quick sweep. Where we had to be picked up from was The Oaks which was directly across the road from us. We got there at 7.00 am ready for a 7.30am pickup. The coach arrived at 7.15am so on the coach we went and headed off at 7.30am bound for Berimah Train Station.

After 25 minutes we arrived at the train station, which was very ironic as that is how long it took us by coach to get to the train station for our Cali Zephyr trip.

Once our luggage was unloaded we were able to disembark and grab our luggage and head to checkin.

Checkin was quite smooth and we found our carriage was Carriage O with the train going to Carriage R with 4 carriages past R for the staff onboard. Our checkin consultant said that the train was nearly 1km long so that’s pretty impressive.

As part of the service, we had a champagne breakfast with many different pastries. I was very delighted to see that gluten free was on offer and the muffin and slice I had was absolutely delicious. If that was anything to go by, the food on the train would be amazing.

After breakfast and the obligatory photos, we made our way to our carriage. We could have got a buggy ride to carriage but we opted to walk the nearly 1km to it.

Once onboard we unpacked and made ourselves at home. We read up about everything on offer in the Ghan book and then our attendant came and gave us the room tour. As the room is very similar to the one we had on the Cali Zephyr we pretty much knew how everything worked.

We spent the morning taking in the scenery in the lounge car as we waited for our lunch seating time which was 11.30am. We were waited on my Aaron the barman and our attendant in the lounge car and meal car is Yasmin. All foods, beers, wines, spirits, ciders and soft drinks as well as barista coffee, hot chocolates and tea are all inclusive.

During lunch we sat with a lovely couple Lisa and Andrew who are about 10 years older than us who have just retired from an interior design business. They travel the world and we had a lovely time talking about all our travels and we didn’t draw breath.

Lunch was absolutely divine. Dave and I both had the Buffalo Curry, whilst I had a pistachio icecream some for dessert and Dave had a pineapple tart. We both enjoyed a couple of Chivas Regal with a hot chocolate for me after lunch.

We were due to reach Katherine at 2.00pm however we were delayed waiting for a freight train to pass (the rail lines are only 1 line so freight takes precedent over The Ghan). We arrived at 2.30pm and we were soon on the coach taking us out to Nitmiluk Gorge. We enjoyed a leisurely 1.5hr cruise taking in all the amazing views while listening to our very informative tour guy tell us everything there was to know about the gorge. As Katherine had just experience one of the highest floods on record, we couldn’t get into the second gorge so only toured the first gorge.

Our dinner time seating was 6.15pm and we only got back just in time for our seating. We were seated and lo and behold, Lisa and Andrew were seated with us again, so we had another meal of lots of talking and laughing. Lisa loves her wine.

Talking about wine, I said to Dave about an hour into the trip, I thought young people could drink but the oldies (and I can say that as we are one of the youngest couples on the train) are butting the young ones to shame. I really don’t know how some of them were standing after welcome drinks.

For dinner, which was a 3 course meal, Dave had crocodile dumplings, steak and sticky date pudding for dessert while I had duck for entree (man o man was it absolutely delicious, I will crave that for a very long time), steak for main and an apricot cake for dessert.

We got back to our room and our beds were made up with our lanyard for tomorrow off train experience, some tea bags, chocolates and the most amazing room spray. The top bunk has an innerspring mattress which is an upgrade from the Zephyr and has a lot more room to manoeuvre around.

The whole time during meal service, the train was stationary. We could back to our room and I said to Dave that we should have our shower while the train is stopped. Got everything ready to have our shower and a freight train went past. That was the reason we were stationary. As soon as it passed, we were on our way again.

After our shower, we filled up our water bottles and Dave turned in for the night while I wrote this blog and then watched some episodes of ER that I had downloaded.

Pretty amazing first day on The Ghan, can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.Read more