Travelling on "The Ghan" Day 2: "A Town like Alice"

The day was overcast and at least in the early part of the morning travel was through more heavily vegetated areas than late yesterday. There was a plentiful cover of grass tussocks, many small shrubs and occasional forest-like sections with trees and large shrubs. I am no expert on what these might be, but I did recognise some eucalypts and what looked like silky oak. Apparently the large shrubs are saltbushes. Later on in addition to the silky oaks there were some tall pine-like trees with cones. The red earth seemed a little duller, but perhaps this was just due to the overcast sky. There were occasional signs of civilisation, such as dirt tracks, windmills and water and communication towers. At one stage on the western side of the train line there were extensive areas where it looked as if a grass fire had gone through not too long ago, but had not 'jumped the track'. From time to time a number of cattle were spotted lingering under trees and a couple of eagles soared overhead.

As the train will be stopping in Alice Springs in the early afternoon, there is a curious arrangement catering-wise of a "rolling brunch" between 0700 and 1200 rather than breakfast and lunch. Having a bit of a propensity towards hypoglycaemia with lack of food, I decided to start the day with a muesli bar and a cup of tea and then attend 'brunch' later in the morning to improve the chances of lasting through to dinner time without 'fading' too much. I also hatched a cunning plan to take the aforesaid trusty thermos on the Alice Springs 'whistle-stop tour' (but alas did not have time to use it due to the tight timeline). (The tour is reviewed separately in another posting.)

Travelling north from Alice Springs the vegetation was generally denser and greener, and there were a few waterholes along the side of the track. At one stage there were also many tall red termite mounds amongst the bushes. The day remained overcast and by late afternoon it had completely clouded over.

Being New Year's Eve, GSR kindly provided nibbles and a complimentary drink in the lounge close to midnight as well as party decorations and balloons. A relatively small group saw in the New Year and several (quite brief) firework displays in Tennant Creek (the train stopped here for a couple of hours).

It is somewhat amusing that every time you are seated with a new group of people in the dining car that you always end up having some elements of conversation that are exactly the same - where are you from, what do you do, have you done any other train trips like this, what made you decide to travel on The Ghan, etc.