Dear Family & Friends,

This is a new type of trip this year for us, two of our 'bucket list' items were to experience Darwin in 'The Wet' and to travel on 'The Ghan'.   As Great Southern Rail would not allow us to put our motorhome on The Ghan, due to it's size we had to look into other ways of travel.  Our motorhoming friends from Bright, Steph & Robin also wished to experience the same things as us so we booked this trip.

On Saturday, Australia Day we flew out of Melbourne, arriving in Adelaide, booked into Rydges Hotel opposite the Parklands, nice and sunny about 25, very pleasant after the heat we have been having this summer.  My cousin Cherilyn & Len picked us all up and drove us down to Hallett Cove, south of Adelaide where we met up with cousin Bronwyn & Peter for a delicious lunch overlooking the water, magnificent view and SA seem to do the best fish & chips of anywhere.  Back to Bronwyn & Peter's to view their lovely garden and have more nibbles and chat then to our hotel for a rest and later a local pub for dinner.  Good start to our holiday, great day, thanks Cherilyn & Bronwyn.

Sunday morning, sunny and pleasant again, breakfast at the hotel and then a cab 5 minutes down the road to Parklands Station (we could have walked!!) where we booked in our luggage.  We departed at 12:20pm, our train has 34 carriages and is 780m long, has a Red (non sleeper class) a red sleeper class then many carriages of Gold Class and a Lounge carriage, 2 Queen Adelaide Restaurant carriages and some Platinum Class carriages .  We had booked Gold Class.

For those of you who have not experienced the Ghan, I will explain our cabin, a long couch during the day with a big picture window to watch the view, a wardrobe with a safe, a bathroom (small but adequate) all well-appointed with mirrors, power points, speakers with music, stories etc, if you leave the door open you then can see out the window on the other side, although the views are much the same, into Northern Territory now as I type this on Monday morning, mostly flat saltbush.  When we go to the Restaurant for dinner at night they come and make up our beds, 2 bunks (Pete gets the top one) very comfortable, chocolates on your folded back bed, they close the blinds for you and leave everything ready.

There is a little room in each carriage where you can make tea and coffee as you wish, you can spend time sitting in your room watching the view or reading etc or go to the lounge/bar carriage and chat to other people, have drinks or coffee, play cards or board games which are available or read, whatever you choose.  We have met some lovely people and had lots of fun.  Majority are our age and older (yes kids there are people older than us!!!).  Lunch is a 2 course meal, dinner and breakfast 3 courses.  Food beautifully presented good choices and lovely white cloths, attentive service etc.  Wines are all Australian and great, although they did have to go and find some Bundy for Pete, now they know his preference and have it ready!!

We watched the sunset on the landscape last evening before a late dinner, slept well last night,  the train doesn't go very fast, and slows and stops at times so relaxing and pleasant.  You can be woken at 6:30am with a cuppa if you wish, too early for us so opted out of that one.  Before breakfast Monday morning there was quite a jolt, we stopped and later there was an announcement to say we had struck a '4 legged animal' we believe it was a cow, held up for about 10 minutes, then on we went.  Lovely breakfast in the restaurant and then an announcement that we were crossing the border into Northern Territory.

The next interesting thing was the Iron Man statue which signifies the one millionth rail sleeper laid on the line, there were 2 million concrete rail sleepers laid on the line between Alice Springs & Darwin, We then passed over the Finke River, apparently it flows deeply during periods of heavy rainfall but soon dries up during the hotter times, as you can see from the photo, it is said that this is one of the oldest rivers in the world.  We finally arrived in Alice Springs at 1:30pm on Monday with about a 4 hour stop here.

Trust this finds you all fit and well.

Love from Jan ‘n Pete