…Full of Nothing But Space, and It’s My Happy Place!

We woke up in the Nullabor…

At 6:21am we opened our blinds to the view on the bottom right! At 7:11am we repaired to the lounge car to wait for breakfast service, top right view. At 8:09am we waved to the lone person on the siding at Forrest, which looked like it consisted of a dirt airfield, power lines and no visible housing, maybe behind some trees in the distance, bottom left view. At 10:45am we crossed the WA/SA (Western Australia/South Australia) border.

After lunch at about 2:30 we stopped in the ghost town of Cook. Established in 1917 when the railway was built, it was a major center for track maintenance and locomotive and rolling stock repairs, and it supported a school and hospital. The town was effectively closed in 1997 when the Australian National Railways’ assets were sold to a private railway operating company and has a population of 4 now. Cook is the only scheduled stop on the Nullarbor Plain for our passenger train and has little other than curiosity value for us passengers strolling around while the train is replenished with water. We disembarked and strolled for about 45 minutes, learning the “Australian Wave”, flicking your hand across your face to scatter the flies buzzing around!

The largest building still standing is the old school with the now filled-in swimming pool out front!
A newspaper laying in the shade under the 2nd story deck dated from 1998 and advertised a concert with Elton John & Billy Joel for March 18 in Adelaide!

The railway line has the longest straight section of railway in the world (478 km; 297 mi)!

Robert had time to set up his drone and fly over the townsite to take a picture of the Indian Pacific in it’s entirety, dwarfed by the surrounding flat plain!

We boarded the train when the whistles blew and continued down the track and into the night, enjoying our second gourmet dinner and nightcaps in the lounge car!

We were up very early, finishing up breakfast and last minute house cleaning before we packed the car and headed out to return it.

We saw our first urban kangaroos! And the first on the continent, this morning at sunrise on our way to turn in the rental car.

We caught the metro train from the airport to the central train station to board the Indian Pacific!

Our first sight of the train!

After a buffet-continental breakfast on the station platform, consisting of pastries, both sweet and savory, fruit, coffee or tea, and juice we were shown to our cabin to settle in.

We enjoyed our first glass of wine in our cabin as the train started moving through Perth!

We followed the Avon River out of the suburbs of Perth and even spotted areas with motorhomes and caravans camping along its banks.

In no time at all it seemed we were free of the urban/suburban boundary and traveling through the Western Australia Outback! We joined our fellow travelers in the lounge car to enjoy the view and meet new friends!

Our trip started at 10am and we were soon seated for lunch, the first of many gourmet meals! By sunset, around 5:30pm we were ready for our next meal, but our seating was at 6:15, oh well, time for another glass of wine!

Dinner is a 3 course affair, this is the main course. By the dessert course it was dark out!

As we all relaxed to digest our wonderful meal, at almost 10pm we made our first stop, Kalgoorlie, the iconic Western Australia (WA) goldmining boom town! Those of us choosing to take the tour, which lasts until midnight, boarded coaches and were whisked through the dark, quiet streets that echoed with the bustle of the goldmining boom of 1893! We disembarked our buses at the SuperPit, a huge hole in the ground that has been producing gold ore since the heady days of the boom. In 1989 the Kalgoorlie Consolidates Gold Mines was able to buy up many mining leases spread along the “Golden Mile” of lucrative ground, amalgamating them into one giant hole or SuperPit!

Since it was ‘a dark and stormy night’ with lightning in the distance, the view of the pit was underwhelming, so I took a picture of the signboard showing an aerial view of the pit! The huge trucks used to move the ore looked like tiny dots of light in the depths of the pit.

From the SuperPit we continued the tour to a museum based over an old mine, Hannans North Tourist Mine, Paddy Hannan being one of the miners that discovered the gold field here! We were entertained with a short play, which I didn’t understand much of, being delivered in ‘Australian slang’, or maybe an Irish-Australian accent!

The vignette of early Kalgoorlie townsite was the backdrop for the play.

The buses then returned through town, and took us along Hay street, THE most notorious Red Light District of Australia! The blurry picture of the ‘pink doors’ is the last brothel, no longer operating only recently! The Questa Casa was the oldest operating brothel in Australia! Apparently tours are conducted at 3pm daily, but there are no more after-dark services offered!

We were then deposited back at the station to board the train and climb into our beds for the first night of rocking and rolling along the rails!

The green line is the extent of travel today, from Perth to our first stop, Kalgoorlie. Overnight we will continue traveling east to reach our next stop, Cook, tomorrow!

Our last full day in Perth was spent redistributing our packing for our upcoming 4 day train trip and then an afternoon walk with the family. It was another beautiful day in Perth, warm but with some clouds, the air cleaned by the recent rains, and a light breeze to keep us cool.

The favorite playground and swing!

Beautiful bougainvillea shows off Perth’s semi-tropical climate!

A cloudy morning greeted us, but the air was refreshed by yesterdays rainfall which was modest here, but caused some flash flooding south of Perth! We headed out to do some sightseeing at Serpentine National Park, a short 30 minute drive from our Airbnb. A short walk from the parking area took us past signage acknowledging the aboriginal connection to this unique spot.

The Aborigines of Australia have a 65,000 year history of human habitation on the continent!

On to the falls, which thanks to the rain, was flowing into the deep blue pool.

We hiked up to a lookout above the falls through a eucalyptus forest with such fresh air it reminded us of Vick’s VapoRub minus the menthol! VapoRub has 1.2% Eucalyptus oil!

As we approached the top of the bluff we found this plant, looking like a grass, but in a tree form! 

They are Grass Trees! A native plant of 66 species found only in Australia! The ‘trunk’ is made up of older leaf bases cemented together by a resin. The older leaves hanging down like a skirt around the trunk form an insulating layer around the plant protecting it from fire.

At the top of the bluff we looked down on Serpentine Falls and the pool, in the center of the picture.

We finished the day with a cookout at Joe & Candice’s place!

We couldn’t get the gas grill to work, but it served as a base for the George Foreman electric grill! Probably for the best since the chance of a bush fire from open flame is so dangerous with the drought still prevalent!

We all know that a Democracy entails participation by the governed!

“The hallmark of democracy is that it permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by regularly choosing their leaders and by voting in assemblies or referenda. If their participation is to be meaningful and effective—if the democracy is to be real and not a sham—citizens must understand their own interests, know the relevant facts, and have the ability to critically evaluate political arguments. Each of those things presupposes education.”

So, Deschutes County forwarded our ballots to our present location, which we provided the address to before we left the country! We spent today perusing and studying the voter pamphlet online and voting in the 2024 Primary Election, then running around town looking for a place we could print out the forms we need to fill out as absentee voters, signing them and emailing the ballots back to Deschutes County!We then relaxed inside while it rained and thundered outside!

A beautiful sunset ended the very blustery, stormy evening!