Across the outback by rail: Griff Rhys Jones’ great Australian adventure
Griff Rhys Jones is entranced by the vast emptiness of Australia, which you can really only appreciate by train
RT Travel - 4 February 2025
I first got the Oz train bug when I was in Adelaide, 15 years ago. I had, of course, flown to that southernmost city – but I then discovered there was a railway called “the Ghan” that crossed through the middle of the continent, trundling through the Red Desert (the one that roasted early explorers like ants in a frying pan) to tropical Darwin.
Goodness, I longed to go; but, ironically, another route got me first, equally bizarre and enticing. This was the Indian Pacific – east to west, 4,352km, three nights, from Sydney to Perth, across a huge swathe of nothing. It is even called “nothing”: the “Nullarbor” Plain means “no trees” in Latin. Not just no trees, though; not much of anything else, either, for half the trip.
I was going home from Sydney and wanted to take a nonstop flight back to Britain, which you can only do from Perth, in Western Australia. I realised I could take this train to get there. And, as I rattled off through Sydney’s Blue Mountains, I discovered I was about to see the real Australia. “But you can’t go anywhere except up to the dining car and back, mate,” people said. That is the point. You enter a limbo. You are going nowhere, while going somewhere. Socialise a bit if you want, but you’re in the rolling stock sensory deprivation tank. And “outside” becomes the thing.
I remember I sat gawping at the Nullarbor Plain for hours on end. Yes, no trees but plenty of blue-tinged, low scrub. It never alters. Flat, unchanging and mesmerising. After an hour, I went back to my book.
“Oh look,” said my wife Jo, “an emu!” “What?!” I threw down the reading. I stared intently, much more intently this time, for another three hours. Nothing. Null. Just that scrub. Not a tweet of emu. No wallaby. None of the huge wild camel population. No sheep even. No birds and certainly no trees.
If you take to the air, you don’t get a dose of the gritty certainty of this hopelessly vast and empty place. But rattle through by train and you understand why the most urbanised nation on Earth was made by the dust and light of its hinterland, out there, outside the window, out “back”.
The train would occasionally stop and toss boxes of booze and packaging at a single man standing by a battered truck. At one point we took on water. I could see a house by the trackside, on its own, in the middle of a desert, yet it was surrounded by a wall containing a quarter of an acre, or less. Did that allow a bit of cultivation free of pests? But why take such a small amount? Go on, have a lot, why don’t you?
We visited one “farm” that was a million acres. The railway station where we paused was 70km from the shearing sheds, but still on the farm’s land. The wool no longer went by train; it went by truck, and the sheep were herded to shearing by helicopter and trail bike. The train used to be the vital, irreplaceable link that made these places possible at all. It pulled special shop-trucks. It took kids away to boarding school in faraway Sydney. It brought soldiers back from the war. It let settlers find gold and get it out from Kalgoorlie. (They still do.)
Other trains, up in the north-west, don’t have any people on them at all. Robot rail systems shift billions of dollars’ worth of iron to China. But the grand routes across and up and down the oldest landmass in the world are now there for tourism. Being Australian, the service is relaxed, chummy and big-hearted.
You know, when I got to the end of that first trip, I was offered the chance to explore the whole Australian network for TV and I didn’t hesitate to take it. I did the entire Indian Pacific route again. I did the east coast, up past the massive banana plantations and out into Queensland cattle country.
I left from Darwin and rattled down to Alice Springs, which is green, and Coober Pedy, which is red. I roped crocodiles, fell out of rafts, joined a mass of tourists for the silly gazing at a rock, which they sillily reached by jumbo jet. I drove along dried-up rivers and tried to interview an Aboriginal water-divining guide, while a mass of flies sucked at the water in our eyes.
I found Australia and I would do it all again. Luckily, we made a record of the entire system. You can watch it on More4. But if you want to understand how the outback really is, my advice is go, and let the train take the “strine”.
Goodness, I longed to go; but, ironically, another route got me first, equally bizarre and enticing. This was the Indian Pacific – east to west, 4,352km, three nights, from Sydney to Perth, across a huge swathe of nothing. It is even called “nothing”: the “Nullarbor” Plain means “no trees” in Latin. Not just no trees, though; not much of anything else, either, for half the trip.
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I was going home from Sydney and wanted to take a nonstop flight back to Britain, which you can only do from Perth, in Western Australia. I realised I could take this train to get there. And, as I rattled off through Sydney’s Blue Mountains, I discovered I was about to see the real Australia. “But you can’t go anywhere except up to the dining car and back, mate,” people said. That is the point. You enter a limbo. You are going nowhere, while going somewhere. Socialise a bit if you want, but you’re in the rolling stock sensory deprivation tank. And “outside” becomes the thing.
I remember I sat gawping at the Nullarbor Plain for hours on end. Yes, no trees but plenty of blue-tinged, low scrub. It never alters. Flat, unchanging and mesmerising. After an hour, I went back to my book.
“Oh look,” said my wife Jo, “an emu!” “What?!” I threw down the reading. I stared intently, much more intently this time, for another three hours. Nothing. Null. Just that scrub. Not a tweet of emu. No wallaby. None of the huge wild camel population. No sheep even. No birds and certainly no trees.
If you take to the air, you don’t get a dose of the gritty certainty of this hopelessly vast and empty place. But rattle through by train and you understand why the most urbanised nation on Earth was made by the dust and light of its hinterland, out there, outside the window, out “back”.
The train would occasionally stop and toss boxes of booze and packaging at a single man standing by a battered truck. At one point we took on water. I could see a house by the trackside, on its own, in the middle of a desert, yet it was surrounded by a wall containing a quarter of an acre, or less. Did that allow a bit of cultivation free of pests? But why take such a small amount? Go on, have a lot, why don’t you?
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We visited one “farm” that was a million acres. The railway station where we paused was 70km from the shearing sheds, but still on the farm’s land. The wool no longer went by train; it went by truck, and the sheep were herded to shearing by helicopter and trail bike. The train used to be the vital, irreplaceable link that made these places possible at all. It pulled special shop-trucks. It took kids away to boarding school in faraway Sydney. It brought soldiers back from the war. It let settlers find gold and get it out from Kalgoorlie. (They still do.)
Other trains, up in the north-west, don’t have any people on them at all. Robot rail systems shift billions of dollars’ worth of iron to China. But the grand routes across and up and down the oldest landmass in the world are now there for tourism. Being Australian, the service is relaxed, chummy and big-hearted.
You know, when I got to the end of that first trip, I was offered the chance to explore the whole Australian network for TV and I didn’t hesitate to take it. I did the entire Indian Pacific route again. I did the east coast, up past the massive banana plantations and out into Queensland cattle country.
I left from Darwin and rattled down to Alice Springs, which is green, and Coober Pedy, which is red. I roped crocodiles, fell out of rafts, joined a mass of tourists for the silly gazing at a rock, which they sillily reached by jumbo jet. I drove along dried-up rivers and tried to interview an Aboriginal water-divining guide, while a mass of flies sucked at the water in our eyes.
I found Australia and I would do it all again. Luckily, we made a record of the entire system. You can watch it on More4. But if you want to understand how the outback really is, my advice is go, and let the train take the “strine”.
For more information, see journeybeyondrail.com.au
Griff’s Great Australian Rail Trip, Wednesday 9.00pm More4
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