Accross the no trees plain

 It  was very restless nights sleep with the train rockin and rollin and bumping and squeakin and groanin and bangin and knockin and stoppin and startin.  The tracks out this way don't seem to be as smooth as earlier on. Almost miss the old days of kerthunk, kerthunk...kerthunk, kerthunk... at least that had some sort of rhythm. The early morning sunrise over the sparsly bushed dessert was not spectacular due to annoying cloud cover. Climbed down from the upper bunk to capture it anyway.

The cabin is a tight squeeze with ourselves and the cases performing a merry dance as we navigate around it. It is functional and quite comfortable though. The shower in the loo works surprisingly well. The train was built in the 70s and doesn't look like much has been done to it in the meantime, but suspect looks can be deceiving in this case. It does reek of olde worlde charm though. Our lounge and restaurant cars service 4 sleepers worth of passengers. This is one set of five which make up the entire train and we don't get to see the other 4 as they are divided by power generation cars (no passenger access). 250 passengers. 45 staff. Lots of happy vibes emanating from everyone. The staff are mostly young Adelaidians who spend a week on and a week off, criss crossing the continent on a timeless journey through the timeless landscape. The passengers are mostly elderly and enjoying the fruits of past labour's. By the time we'd had our late breakfast we paused at Forest to drop of mail and supplies to the couple who live there the Nulabor had became truly thus. This day of the journey is Do Nothing day and therefore the Bartender is encouraging folks to consume his wares. So doing nothing means Bloody Mary's post breakfast.

We got lucky with our cabin as the seats face forward and we're up the front of the train. Even managed to surreptitiously clean our window at the Kalgoorlie stop last night so the views are nice and clear. In the middle of knowwhere we stopped at a place called Cook. This is a fuel stop (water for our showers and diesel for the beast up front). Once topped up the consuming hordes are allowed to disembark to wander around the ghost town that was once a vibrant bustling collection of fibro cement, tin roof constructions that supported at least 50 people. Scattering like a pent up collection of crippled overweight aged lizards finnaly freed from a Herpetologist release cage we all headed in various directions from our allocated portable steps to get the only exercise allowed for the day.

The sun was beating unrelentlessly down as the slight breeze drifted in off the plain swaying the salt bushes and filling the lungs with some relief. You could almost hear the metal guitar strings twanging poignantly as the bad guys boots hit the dirt. The various shaped wrinkled chameleons wandered aimlessly around snaping memories on their devices all whilst making sure they didn't go within 2 meters of the tracks. 30 mins later all were back on board with our lounge car being the first of 5 to consume the delights of our resident musican whilst talking over the top of him, louder and louder as more drinks were consumed.

The Nulabor Plain kept on being so for km after fascinating km. And then, just as it looked like rain in the distant clouds the trees reappeared and the tracks started to wind their way through red dunes covered in what looked like Mallee scrub.

Could not tell that was the longest straight train track in the world as the beast jumps around so much one can't really tell were we are going.
Quote if the day when lining up for dinner "where have you been for the last couple of days?" ... for the unexperienced the answer is funnily obvious as the whole group has been contained to only 6 cars in that time. No option.
Dinner was delightful again as the sun disappeared behind interesting clouds throwing the orange light on the tree lined red sand dunes as we weaved our way amongst them.