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  • Adventuring Down Under
    12
    Day 117

    Ferry … Cape Jervis to KI

    April 6 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 64 °F

    The Ghan pulled into the Adelaide Parklands Terminal slightly ahead of its 10:00a scheduled arrival. Our train journey now over, we bid newly-made friends adieu, detrained, picked up our checked bags, and hopped in an Uber to the Avis rental office a few miles away.

    We were way ahead of schedule when we began the drive to Cape Jervis, the departure point for the SeaLink ferry that connects Kangaroo Island [KI] with mainland Australia. Arriving at 2:30p, we tried to stand by for the 3:00p ferry … but no luck. At least I had already gone online to switch our 6:00p reservation to 4:00p, so the wait for the next ferry wasn’t too bad.

    The 45-minute ride across the Backstairs Passage was uneventful. Before we knew it, the ferry was unloading at the terminal in Penneshaw … on KI’s Dudley Peninsula. We headed straight to our AirBNB accommodations, a lovely little house just 5 minutes out of town … with a view of Kingscote Harbour.

    While I settled in, Mui drove back into town for snacks and a bottle of wine. Munchies on the veranda before the temp dipped further was the plan. Chores could wait until later.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 116

    Ghan: Bubbly @ the Manguri Siding

    April 5 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F

    There were two surprises in store for us when we returned to the Manguri siding after our Coober Pedy tour.

    First up, our bus driver drove us to the front of the train for a photo op. He knew exactly where and how to take photos of us with the train in the background. A great “memorabilia” of our Ghan journey. I only wish our train was being pulled by the iconic red engine.

    Next we found sunset bubblies and canapés awaiting us. Fires had been lit … for ambiance and to keep the infamous Red Center flies at bay.

    A fun conclusion to our day … and to our Ghan journey, which will formally end tomorrow when we reach Adelaide.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 116

    Ghan: Exploring Coober Pedy

    April 5 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 72 °F

    From The Breakaways, we headed into Coober Pedy for an introductory drive around town before making a few stops.

    Remember the potential high temperature I mentioned for the park? As high as 113F? Well the town of Coober Pedy can have similar temps. So, the townspeople live mostly underground. Even the church we visited has been excavated out of the sandstone by volunteers.

    Known simply as the underground church, the Church of Saint Elijah the Prophet is a Serbian Orthodox place of worship built in 1993 by the Serbian Australians who settled in Coober Pedy to mine for opal. The entire complex, which includes a church, community hall, a parish house, and a religious school is 9 to 55 feet below ground. The iconostasis is made of glass; bas reliefs of the saints are etched into the stone (difficult to see in the dim interior).

    From the church, we headed to the Quest Opal Mine. Here we were given a tour of the mine and tried our hand at a bit of “fossicking” (recreational prospecting) for opals … found nothing but some potch (non-refracting white opal that has no value). Then we were led into some of the old shafts where we had lunch in rooms carved out of the rock. The meal was served family-style … delicious and fun.

    Our tour wrapped up with a visit to the Umoona Opal Mine … a museum of sorts. We learned about the types of opals set into jewelry … including doublets and triplets … doublets having a backing behind a thin layer of opal; and triplets having both a backing and a clear dome that protect a paper-thin sliver of opal. Of course, solid opals are the best.

    Before finishing up in the showroom, our tour took us into an underground dugout home similar to those in which miners live even to this day. These houses are popular because the temperature is a steady 73-77F day and night … throughout the year.

    Yes, we did peruse the offerings in the showroom. Mui had done his research and knew what to look for. After some serious negotiation on his part, I walked out with a pendant … opting specifically for a Coober Pedy mined solid opal.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 116

    Ghan: Coober Pedy … The Breakaways

    April 5 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F

    When it was time to pick our off-train experience for Cooper Pedy, I was torn between learning more about the mining town and opals — the gemstone that is synonymous with Australia — and going out to The Breakaways, a conservation park nearby. Luckily, the “Explore Coober Pedy” tour offered a bit of both.

    Once we got off the bone-rattling dirt road from the Manguri siding and joined the Stuart Highway, we headed away from the town to visit The Breakaways … known today as the Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park. It is registered as an Aboriginal heritage site that has been handed back to its traditional custodians.

    The scene of movies such as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Ground Zero, The Breakaways was so named because, from a distance, the mesas and low hills look like they have broken away from the escarpment that surrounds the area. The park protects a semi-arid landscape where summer temperatures can exceed 113F! Lucky us … it wasn’t much more than 80F today.

    Once we reached the lookout that gave us a breathtaking glimpse of the colorful scenery, we were given about 30 minutes to wander around and enjoy the scenery. Hot and cold beverages were also available for us to sip as we feasted our eyes on the scenery.

    My only regret? We didn’t get to see the infamous Dog Fence on this short stop … first built in the 1880s to keep dogs out of Western Australia … stretching some 3,500 miles across the country.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 116

    Ghan: Coober Pedy … Opal Mining

    April 5 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 64 °F

    Australia isn’t the only place in the world where opals are found. But it has become pretty much the only source of opals since the 1880s … producing some 95% of the precious gem.

    Our day started at the Manguri rail siding where we detrained onto buses for our off-train experience in and around Coober Pedy … which produces more opal by mass than anywhere else.

    I’m not sure how long it usually takes to get into town when the dirt road leading from the siding in the middle of nowhere has been graded. Today it took us about 40 minutes to reach the Stuart Highway. Despite our driver’s skills, it felt like we were driving over onduline-clad roads. The noise so loud that at times he had to stop his narration.

    Nonetheless, the drive was interesting because it took us through the opal fields of the area. Distant, conical piles of dirt that we thought at first were natural land formations turned out to be piles of dirt … marking the location of some 1.5 million mine shafts that dot the landscape … many of them abandoned or played-out.

    Opal mining here dates back to 1915 when the first opal claim was staked out. But it wasn’t until after WWI that opal mining took off … when returning soldiers started to seek their fortune here. After WWII, a batch of Europeans arrived to join them. By the 1970s, the opal rush was well underway.

    In general, opal mining is done by individual miners rather than large corporations. Early miners dug their shafts by hand … 3- to 10-meters deep. They reinforced the walls with timber and then lowered themselves into the shafts to dig tunnels.

    In modern times, the digging has become mechanized. The excavated dirt is transported to a drum mounted on a truck and shot out into a pile near the shaft … those tepee-like mounds we saw today. We also saw a few open-cut mining operations, but they were few and far between.

    Luck is a huge factor in finding opals. There is no scientific way of determining where there might be an opal vein. In this respect, opal mining is different from searching for gold or diamonds. The whole endeavor is very much hit and miss … with the latter being the case more often not.

    In any event, if a miner is lucky, he finds veins of common opal (the white, non-refractive stuff), following them in hopes of finding precious opal … which then has to be extracted very carefully as the silica-based gem is very fragile. Sometimes the miner found opalized fossils of prehistoric animals and plants, many of which have been donated to museums around Australia.

    Definitely not an easy way of making one’s fortune!    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    4
    Day 115

    Ghan: Dining Under the Stars

    April 4 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 72 °F

    One of the reasons we chose The Ghan Expedition over the regular train trip was the event planned for tonight at the Telegraph Station … considered the birthplace of Alice Springs.

    The Telegraph Station was established in 1871 as a relay station on the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) between Darwin and Adelaide. The construction of the OTL is recognized as one of the great engineering achievements of the 19th century.

    The “singing wire,” as the line was known, was strung across some 1,870 miles of land that had gone largely unexplored. There were no towns along the way, so everything had to be transported overland. Eighteen months were allocated to the construction project, which began in July 1870 with the surveying of the route for the line. The northern and southern ends were connected in August 1872 … after a seven-month delay. The line had 36,000 telegraph poles and 11 repeater stations along the way. Eventually, the line was tied into the undersea network of the British Empire.

    Arriving at the Telegraph Station, we were greeted with glasses of bubbly and directed inside the building to visit the exhibits. Then, following the music from the live band, we found site where we would be dining under the stars once night fell. Tables and chairs dressed in white added elegance to the setting. Camels stood by on the far side, waiting to give us rides.

    Wine was poured … freely and frequently. We each received our own entree, which consisted of delicacies such as kangaroo chili con carne, camel köfte, and barramundi ceviche. The mains — Black Angus sirloin and chicken roulades — and sides were served family style. Dessert consisted of a gourmandise and cheese platter. There was apparently a s’mores station, but no one pointed it out or invited us to partake, so we missed that.

    A lovely mid-journey event. We will remember for a long time the ambiance of dining under the stars in the Red Center of Australia.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 115

    Ghan: A Town Called Alice

    April 4 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 75 °F

    A good night’s rest on The Ghan. A good breakfast. And we were ready for our tour of Alice Springs, the second stop of this train journey.

    Disembarking at the platform, we had a long walk to the buses … one that took us by the memorial to The Ghan. The plaque explained that work on the planned 1,800-mile rail line began in 1878. At first, the line that started in Port Augusta in the south didn’t make it further than Oodnatta … less than 500 miles to the north. From here, camel trains ferried passengers and freight some 450 miles to and from Alice Springs until the “mechanical train” finally reached Alice in 1929. Thus the train was given the moniker of The Ghan to honor the camel train and the Afghans who ran it. It wasn’t until 2004 that the entire length of the railway was completed.

    The first stop of the tour was at the “School of the Air,” which was established in 1951. It is the largest of its kind, providing educational services to remote areas covering over half a million square miles. It was the first school to use two-way radio broadcasts with pedal transmitters and receivers. Today those services continue with more modern methods — internet via satellite being the most common — but student materials are still shipped via mail.

    Our next stop was at Yubu Napa, an art gallery of Aboriginal and Australian made works, a gift shop, and a studio. One of the Aboriginal artists was painting in the studio and a representative of the gallery stood by to answer questions about the artists, how they create their works, and the inherent symbolism. Photos were allowed of the works, but not of the artist who was in the studio today.

    From the gallery, we went a little ways out of town to the Alice Springs Desert Park, which was to be our lunch stop. A buffet lunch was set up … catered by the chefs of The Ghan. Mui and I hurried through our meal so that we could go for a quick wander to see some of the animals. The timing was wrong unfortunately. The mid-day heat had the animals hiding. The only one we saw was an Emu that was patrolling the fence … perhaps waiting for its mid-day feeding.

    The Alice Springs Reptile Center was next on the agenda. Our visit started with an informative presentation about the venomous snakes of Australia. The presenter was of a humorous bent, making the presentation more interesting. He actually made us more comfortable about snakes around here by showing us how tiny the fangs are. So, as long as we wear long pants and solid footwear, and we remain on trails, we should have no adverse encounters.

    Following the presentation, we went into a room with glass cases housing many of the snake species. I admit, I skipped these and went to the outdoor exhibits to see the other reptiles — skinks, frilled-neck lizards, goannas, perenties, bearded dragons, and thorny devils — and the one resident crocodile.

    A short ride through Alice Springs gave us a look at the town. Then we went up to ANZAC Hill for an aerial view of the town before we were returned to the train station for a little bit of downtime before our evening event.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    Day 114

    Ghan: Nitmiluk Gorge

    April 3 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 90 °F

    The Ghan was on the move on time at 10:00a.

    We settled into our cabin to enjoy the views until lunch at 11:30a. Early, but since we had eaten only a small breakfast at the welcome event, we didn’t mind. Besides we had an off-train experience scheduled for our 2:30p arrival in Katherine.

    Nitmiluk Gorge — aka Katherine Gorge — is a 13-gorge system that meanders around the Katherine River. It is all part of Nitmiluk National Park. The gorge was formed 1,650 thousand million years ago. To put that number a different way … that is over 1.6 BILLION years old. Not surprising, I guess. Australia holds the oldest continental crust on earth … some of it over 4.4 BILLION years old.

    To get to Nitmiluk Gorge, we were bused some 19 miles east from the rail siding where the Ghan came to a stop. It was a smooth drive on a sealed road. The only delay was caused by a film crew that blocked us from continuing forward for about 10 minutes because they were in the midst of filming a scene.

    Our selected experience started with a cruise through the first gorge. Then we’d go ashore at the end of the first gorge, and while part of the group would hike a path to go on another cruise in the second gorge, we’d hike over to an Aboriginal rock art site. Here we would listen to Dreamtime stories about the creation, learn about the significance of the gorge to the Jawoyn people — the traditional caretakers of these lands — and view thousands of years old rock art that is considered to be evidence of the existence of this culture during the last Ice Age.

    Well, we only got a cruise through the first gorge. In fact, everyone got just that short cruise. The reason? High water levels. The paths we were supposed to hike were under water. So, in the end, the heavy rains from ex-Cyclone Megan, which caused major flooding all the way down to Alice Springs in the center of Australia, did impact our experience.

    It could have been worse, however. Had we arrived just a few days before, we wouldn’t have even made it to the gorge as the road from Katherine was still flooded.

    Wish there wasn’t so much smoke haze from the controlled burns nearby … which some speculated might have been timed to coincide with the movie being filmed because the screenplay required it. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful experience. That it was only around 76F to 78F in a place that regularly sees 3-digit temps … well that was a bonus.

    We returned to The Ghan with a half hour to spare before dinner … delicious food; the included adult beverages flowing freely. While we were at dinner, our cabin seating was transformed into bunk beds for the night.

    We hope for a good night’s rest before tomorrow’s busy tour schedule.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    12
    Day 114

    Ghan: Gold Premium

    April 3 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 84 °F

    After a welcome event at the convention center, we were taken by bus to the Berrimah Rail Station … about 20-30 minute ride outside of Darwin.

    We are now settled into D5 … a Gold Premium cabin with an en suite. So, unlike on the IP, we are traveling together this time.

    Welcomed with mimosas, we are now off. Lunch in about an hour … then our first off-train experience when we reach Katherine this afternoon.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under
    2
    Day 114

    JBR: The Ghan

    April 3 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 79 °F

    Today we begin one of the great train journeys of the world … The Ghan … from Darwin to Adelaide … straight through the “Red Center” of Australia.

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