I’ve been living in Australia for two years now but the furthest I’ve gotten out of town is the weekly jaunt to Fremantle for work or a visit to Joondalup to see family. With this in mind when the chance came up to visit Sydney I seized on it and the chance to see a different side of Australia.

The original plan was to drive from Perth to Sydney, a trip that would likely take us three days if we drove 9 – 12 hours every day. Unfortunately we decided to scrap this idea as the cost of fuel, food and accommodation would put it out of our budget reach. So the other option seemed to be fly directly to Sydney, it was cheaper and quicker, but ultimately we also decided against this as it wouldn’t really allow us to see much of the outback. Thankfully there was a third option; hop on the transcontinental train from Perth to Adelaide and then Sydney.

The Indian Pacific was the first uninterrupted transcontinental rail train linking Perth to Sydney from late February 1970. The train measures 711 metres, weighs 1375 tonnes and travels a total of 4352 kilometres (roughly 65 hours). The passenger accommodation ranges from the luxury sleepers to the ‘cheap’ seats which are very reminiscent of Airplane seating.

What particularly attracted me to this method of transport was that one of my heroes, Bill Bryson, had made a similar trip and had commented that it was a good way to see Australia. Unfortunately with no publishing company to pay for our voyage we had to choose the cheap Red service seats. Even with a fairly hefty student discount it was still much more expensive than flying.

The train leaves Perth at 12:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday the 7^th of July and arrives in Sydney on Saturday the 10^th of July at 10:15 a.m. We’ll be spending most of our time on the train but there are a fair amount of stops; including a quick stop-off at the semi-Ghost town of Cook, in the mining town of Kalgoorlie, a morning stop in Adelaide, an afternoon trip into Broken Hill and finally we get to Sydney. I probably won’t be able to upload these till I actually arrive in Sydney but know that they will be written on the train.