Heard about The Ghan, Australia's famous train? Try The Indian Pacific instead

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03-04-2025

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Three hours: that's how long it takes Shelita Buffet to get ready. There are false eyelashes to glue and cheekbones to contour; there's a neon-bright wig to preen and a sequined pink leotard to tug on — and then there's the generous application of glitter to beard. Looking this good takes time. The first honeyed rays of dawn have only just begun to wash into the mining town of Broken Hill and Shelita is standing on the station platform in a pair of blocky white heels, watching as I step off the train.
I'd boarded in Sydney the day before, leaving behind the skyscrapers and the Opera House's monumental clutch of alabaster shells to make tracks on a journey of continental proportions, rattling east to west across the bottom of Australia aboard the Indian Pacific. It's a journey of 2,704 miles in all from Sydney to Perth, roughly equivalent to travelling from London to Moscow and halfway back over the course of three days. Around the midway point we'll pass through the Nullarbor Plain — a landscape so arid it was once described by Victorian explorer Edward John Eyre as 'the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams'. Broken Hill is one of the stops en route, a remote town 300 miles northeast of Adelaide — in what undoubtedly qualifies as the middle of nowhere.
Many might assume that this outback outpost may not be the most progressive place, given the traditional reputation that back-of-beyond country towns generally have. But drag queens like Shelita have long reigned here. At least, they have since the 1990s, when original royalty Mitzi, Bernadette and Felicia first rolled in on their clapped-out bus, en route through the outback to perform in Alice Springs. Shelita is a local and tells me she remembers when the cult classic Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert came out. She was seven, and many of her parents' friends appeared in it as extras. 'At that time, I had no idea what a drag queen even was,' she says, as we embark on a tour of the town. 'It wasn't until my teenage years that I realised what the movie was about.'
Silver was discovered nearby in 1885, and many of the road names in Broken Hill now take their inspiration from the elements: there's Cobalt Street, Crystal Lane, Sulphide Street. As we reach Argent Street's broad avenue, the only sign of life this early in the morning comes from a tree dotted with squawking, white tufts — cockatoos. We pause opposite The Palace Hotel, where an ornate balcony wraps around the second of its three floors in a melange of heritage iron lacework worthy of an Old West saloon.
Built originally as a 'coffee palace' in 1889 for the then-princely sum of £12,190, to provide a teetotal alternative to the alcohol-fuelled hotels, it's now known for its collection of maximalist 1980s-era murals that featured heavily in the film — among them an unconvincing reproduction of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. 'It's an iconic building as the home of Priscilla,' Shelita says, placing one manicured hand on her hip, as we take it in from the shade of a shop's domed veranda, the sun now beginning to heat the dry air.
At the town's peak in 1915, around 35,000 people lived in Broken Hill. Today, it's a rather sleepier place: old train carriages gently decay in station yards; a lone man in overalls thumbs a newspaper on a terrace; at the end of a broad, straight boulevard, a slag heap from ongoing mining looms ever taller. Back in the day, trains like the Silver City Comet were a lifeline through the surrounding wilderness to Sydney to the east. It went by another moniker: the Rattler, named for its party trick of rattling tea out of cups as it traversed the uneven terrain.
I'm travelling in comparatively more comfort. Back at the station, I leave Shelita and climb on board the Indian Pacific in time for a late breakfast. As the train heaves off from Broken Hill, an orchestra of squeaks, rattles and creaks starts up, the soundtrack of the carriages that strain to follow the same path they have for the past 50 years. I head to the Queen Adelaide dining car, which appears likewise much as it always has, time capsule-like in its undying commitment to all things retro: the browns and golds, the white tablecloths, the gilded ceiling panels and etched glass booth dividers framed by faux-Grecian columns. Breakfast today is a mix of both refined and unrefined Australian dining: creamy scrambled eggs with hot smoked trout, and a side of toast with Vegemite.
Slowly, freight carriages and pylons pass beyond the windows to reveal a broad, flat plain of blue-green saltbush, broken up by dry creeks and gaping maws of that characteristic red earth. Every so often, a kangaroo raises its smooth head to watch our locomotive interloper, or an emu sprints on gangly legs in the direction of the great, flat horizon. Out here in the Australian bush, the only measure of time's passing comes from the steady arc of the sun. Clouds waft overhead, the dust settles as the breeze softens, and the world seems to hold its breath.
Traversing the breadth of Australia by train is a considerable feat of engineering. Back in the 20th century, around the time of the Rattler, the beginnings of a cross-country railway did exist, but it was missing a central belt between Kalgoorlie and Port Augusta, spanning almost 1,243 miles. Western Australia was instead reached via treacherous sea voyages across the Great Australian Bight. Why this was deemed preferable is unsurprising — consider the technology, the sheer grit and determination, required to cross the breadth of a continent generally characterised by the inhospitality of its landscape.
With the gold fields of Western Australia too isolated in a newly federated country, the first tracks of what would become the Trans-Australian Railway were laid in 1912 — using picks, shovels, carthorses and camels. Five years, 2.5 million hardwood sleepers and 140,000 tonnes of rail later, it was done. In 1969, the route was rebuilt and extended from Sydney to Perth, making it possible to ride a train 62 hours between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean for the first time. And the first passenger train to make the full crossing? The Indian Pacific.
That evening, I crank open the blinds in my cabin to better watch the stars, so bright and clear in the inky darkness that they're more like beacons than pinpricks. Some time during the night, we cross into the Nullarbor, the place from John Edward Eyre's nightmares.
It's here that the Indian Pacific quietens, its familiar clanking rhythms fading to a low, continual rumble. Where the route to Broken Hill had been thunderous, rattling skeletons as much as it once did teacups, the passage west feels calm and straight, almost like we've left all trace of land behind and set sail on the calmest lake. At some far-flung point in history, this vast expanse of limestone bedrock was an ancient seabed, which rose from the waves over the millennia at this near-southernmost edge of the world. There are few trees on the Nullarbor because the soil is a calcium-rich loam, derived mainly from unfathomable quantities of seashells.
The following morning, the magic of the Nullarbor unfolds beyond the window. I watch, transfixed, from my narrow bunk — it's monotonous yet somehow utterly entertaining. Only sporadic, low-lying pockets of stunted eucalypts, saltbush and wild acacia break up the great expanse of perfectly flat, Lucozade-red earth, which unfurls in seemingly limitless quantities in every direction, beyond every window. Few places on Earth are so featureless, few horizons so unbroken for so long. It's a view that tugs at your feet and suggests you take a long walk. But set off here, and trouble surely follows; daytime temperatures can reach 50C, the plains go on for around 124,000 sq miles, and there's a reason why its Aboriginal name is 'Oondiri', or 'the waterless'. Australia is the sixth-largest country in the world, about 30 times the size of the UK, and on this mighty plateau you finally gauge a sense of its mammoth scale. This, the longest straight stretch of train track in the world, is even identifiable from space.
Edward John Eyre was the first European to cross the Nullarbor on foot in 1840-41. He walked in the footsteps of three Aboriginal guides, eating kangaroos and sucking water from the roots of gumtrees to survive. Partway across they also ate their horses, and not long after that two of the guides mutinied — the year-long crossing only succeeding thanks to supplies donated from a passing French whaling vessel. Our crossing will take just over a day, with the contemporary luxuries of live music, air conditioning and an open bar — although in the Queen Adelaide dining car, kangaroo is still on the menu.
In the lounge car, the train's equivalent of a living room one carriage along from the restaurant, proximity fosters conversation and friendships forge easily. Sitting on one of the pink banquettes facing each other across the narrow aisle, a tall man wearing a backwards cap offers the passenger next to him a crisp. 'Don't mind if I do!', says a passing septuagenarian, flashing a grin as he takes one. It's after lunchtime, and the carriage's usual soundtrack of light jazz and clinking wine glasses is punctuated with shouts of 'Indiana!' and 'North Dakota!' as a group makes a game of trying to name the 50 US states from memory. By evening, they'll switch to telling ghost stories.
On the Nullarbor, the art of doing nothing becomes an Olympic sport. For there's virtually nothing here — its name is from the Latin nullus arbor, meaning 'no trees'. The Groundhog Day nature of the landscape means the world narrows to just 27 carriages. At first, it makes you feel nervous — what will you do? — but then your thoughts slow and you remember you like reading. You strike up conversations with strangers in the hallway, barely wide enough for one, grinning sheepishly and scuttling into your cabin like a crab evading the tide whenever another passenger needs to pass. Or you lie back on your bunk and watch all that nothing roll by.
There's a screech as the train slows, red earth still rolling beyond one bank of windows, a grove of eucalypts now visible through the other. Once it stops, we step out into the dust one by one, our boots crunching on a fine layer of terracotta scree. It could be Mars — not least for its sense of utmost remoteness. We're still on the Nullarbor, as we have been for more than 24 hours now, around 620 miles from Adelaide but still some 1,000 from Perth. To my right, beyond the locomotive, the tracks plough on before surrendering to the horizon. Ahead, a jumble of low-lying houses is just visible through the trees.
The township of Cook was established in 1917 as a service centre for the transcontinental railway, with a school, hospital, general store and golf course. Around 300 people lived here at its height, with the weekly 'Tea and Sugar' train supplying the families with sheep, groceries, haircuts — even a present-wielding Santa at Christmas. But by 1997, when the Australian National Railway was sold, it was decided that the town was only needed as a watering and refuelling station — and, almost overnight, it all closed. Cook became a near-ghost town. There are now no permanent residents, though a handful of railway workers endure.
I walk towards the houses, the train's riveted stainless-steel carriages an incongruous procession of silver bullets in an otherwise elemental landscape. I pass a signpost pointing to Sydney, Perth and Souvenirs — though the word 'Souvenirs' has been scratched out. A flaccid windsock briefly stirs as a breeze whispers across the plain. Electricity wires undulate overhead; the only sound, beyond the low rumble of our refuelling train and the crunching of my boots, is the lonely call of a little black-and-white bird perched on one of the pylons.
Ahead, town caretaker Brady Bennett is leaning against a low fence in a fluorescent orange jacket, attempting to flatten his cowlicked silver hair with such fervour that I wonder when he last had a visitor. 'G'day!' he calls over to me with a thick Australian accent, his eyes concealed behind dark glasses, his skin blushing pink from the sun. 'I'm Brady, like the Bunch.'
He tells me he used to work in mining but now cleans the train drivers' quarters, usually remaining here for three weeks — sometimes up to six — before getting a week off. I ask him if it ever gets boring at the heart of the Nullarbor. 'Waking up every morning like this? How's that boring?' he says, his tone incredulous. 'I like the quiet — when I knock off, I go back to my house to have a couple of tinnies and listen to my records, do a bit of gardening.' He points to his house on the end of the row, where spiky succulents emerge from the gravel. On a rusted barrel, he's lined up a row of toy cars with the precision of a drill sergeant.
'I live in Adelaide, but I hate city life really. The traffic jams, everything else. Here there's no traffic, no roundabouts, no crime,' he says. 'I've got a couple of friends here. You sort of keep to yourself but sometimes you might go and have a drink or two with 'em, sometimes we'll have a fire out front and have a yarn. It really is the simple life.' He pauses thoughtfully, before adding: 'But if I want a hamburger, it's 140Ks that way.' He points back the way I've come along the tracks.
Brady directs me along the path to the remnants of the school, past a decaying basketball court, the hoops' nets a tangle of forlorn strings. When I find it, decades spent beneath the Nullarbor sun have begun to erase all evidence: windowpanes peel, machinery rusts orange and an outbuilding classroom slowly turns to splinters, the bleached dingo painted on one side now a ghostly apparition in a field of desert flowers.
The next morning on the train, I wake to something I've not properly seen for days, and Brady hasn't seen for weeks: water. So much of it that it froths and churns in the sunrise's amber light, threatening to spill over the rocky banks and surge into the forested hills that rise steeply on either side. The view through the windows is jarringly bucolic, the red earth of the Nullarbor traded overnight via scenic sleight of hand for green, endless green. The Avon River washes far below and runs parallel to the train tracks; in the far distance, trees dot emerald hummocks like broccoli florets.
After a few hours, the Avon meets the Swan, the mighty watercourse that begins north east of Perth and coils right through the heart of the Western Australian capital before washing out to sea. As we approach the city, humanity appears in greater and greater concentrations: coffee-drinking suburbanites drive to work; people cycle between low bungalows; and workers tend to rows of manicured grapevines. And then I see them: skyscrapers emerging from the haze on the distant blue horizon.
Over three days, we've crossed the breadth of Australia from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, from Sydney to this westernmost terminus, via a landscape so empty that ours were the only footprints for thousands of miles. And now, with a jolt, we're about to rejoin society.
Published in the April 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).