The Ghan, Australia

The luxury One

By Stanley Sobari

The Australian outback is a place that’s hard to grasps: a vast, ill-defined area mapped by Aboriginal people not on paper but in song. It was a mystery to European settlers until they started crossing it on camel, and its loose demarcations – the Red Centre, the Never Never, the Top End – still sound mysterious and remote. That it’s now crossable by train is something of marvel; that the train navigates this extreme, other-worldly land in a degree of luxury is the icing on the cake.

The train is the Ghan, a long-established service that runs up (and down) the centre of Australia from one coast to another on a three-day trip of almost 2,000 miles. Though named  after 19^th-century out back camel drivers who hailed from Afghanistan, it’s a far cry from their tough desert treks. Dinners in the smart onboard restaurant have an unmistakably out back flavor, with kangaroo fillet on the menu, while Platinum service and breakfast in bed. they could, in theory, never leave their cabins, which are decked out with en suites and oversized windows framing the passing landscapes.

The scenery is worthy of large windows indeed. On the northbound route from Adelaide, plains and russet mountains cede to the arid Red Centre, the outback’s heartland of cobalt skies, rust-red earth and haphazard fistfuls of scrub. For its first 75 years, the Ghan ended in the desert city.