Thursday - life on the train

We finally departed Kalgoorlie at 01:40am Thursday morning, and had to do the first of our 'time moving'...1 hour forward!

After a night of broken sleep we woke up at 6am (ish) and watched the sunrise above the Nullabor Plains, which we were now hurtling through at a fair speed.  The view that we now had out of our train window was a stark contrast to the one we had yesterday; instead we were now in the heart of the southern outback, where desert shrubland stretched as far as the eye could see.

We were also travelling along the longest stretch of straight railway line in the world, totalling 478km.  Every couple of hours we passed a small outpost town, usually consisting of a couple of huts, maybe a post office if they were lucky!  The most barren of them all was 'Reid', which as you can see from the photo...everyone had left!  A couple of these 'towns' we stopped to drop off mail or supplies, and one town where we stopped to refill our water was called Cook, the most isolated outpost, 1100km from Adelaide and 1500km from Perth.  As we wandered around the town, which was once a thriving railway settlement we only saw 2 of the 4 residents!

The only other life we saw along this barren, desolate stretch was hundreds of Kangaroos, and a couple of emus and camels! 

As the evening arrived we went for dinner in the dining car and watched as we departed the plains and headed into hilly shrubland.  Once we returned to our seats for the night the darkness outside was pitch black, as we took corners the only light you could see was the trains headlight as it sliced through the dark night!