26.3.11 – Railways and camels (Port Augusta, South Australia)

26.3.11 – Railways and camels  (Port Augusta, South Australia)

We camped at Port Augusta, at the foreshore where Spencer’s Gulf becomes a narrow blue inlet trimmed with golden sand. On the other bank, we could see long lines of railway trucks, painted pink by the evening light. Slowly, a train moved off – two growling yellow and blue diesels pulling up to eighty wagons, some full of coal, some loaded with brightly painted containers, some carrying glinting cars perched on long low loaders. All night, like a long peal of bells of every different note and tone, the shunting of wagons went on.

Galahs

Meg paddling

Port Augusta is an old town, in Australian terms, having been founded in 1853. It’s a pretty place, full of rust and cream coloured 19^th. century buildings, and little bright green parks, trees crowded with pink chested galahs, who cackled and fluttered from branch to branch. One park bordered the beaches on the Gulf, allowing a quick paddle. 

Port Augusta’s position between Sydney on the east, Perth on the west and with connections to Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south, accounts for all the shunting and moving of wagons we witnessed last night. Its hey day came with the railway. But the railways of Australia were hard won. The burning heat and emptiness of the desert interior meant that tools, equipment and manpower had to be taken out by bullock cart to inch the railhead forward. When it was at last complete, the ‘Tea and Sugar’ trains took everything in and out of the outback, to the homesteads, often isolated by hundreds of dry dusty miles from each other. In the days before refrigerated wagons, they even carried a butcher and live sheep to supply fresh meat, butchered to order. Journeys took long days and even weeks, and repair crews had to travel with the train to repair any damage they discovered on the track. On one interminable journey, a pregnant woman kept asking the guard repeatedly ‘Are we nearly at Alice Springs yet?’ Exasperated, he finally remonstrated ‘You shouldn’t have got on this train in that condition’. She replied ‘When I got on this train, I wasn’t in this condition!’ Apocryphal, I think.

Deserted homestead

In the bright sunlight, we headed on towards the blue masses of the Flinders Ranges on the horizon. The road wound up through a mountain pass then straightened out, piercing broad flat plains, unexpectedly green as a result of the recent rain (the outback can turn from red to green in hours if it receives the moisture it craves). Occasional abandoned homesteads told the poignant tale of settlers, determined to turn the bush into huge savannahs of waving wheat, like the central plains of America. But year upon year of drought destroyed their hopes and dreams, and forced them off the land for ever.

Ghan railway

A little railwayline, brown rusty rails twisting and winding, kept us company along the way. This is the Pichi Ritchie Railway, now a voluntary run line, but once part of the famous Ghan Railway, which bored its long route into the depths of the outback. Our stop for the night was Hawker, once the railhead, till the railway closed in 1970 after 90 years. Before the Ghan, donkeys, mules and bullocks were the main methods of supplying the interior. But they were slow and not capable of coping with the terrain and scorching heats of over 50 degrees. So camels and those who could manage them were brought from Afghanistan, and they tackled that route with confidence borne of long experience, swaying under huge loads of wool and provisions. Hence the name Ghan Railway, which followed the route their large feet took across the red sands.

Our own transport gave us a fright today, suddenly spewing pink liquid down the front, accompanied by ominous gurglings and gluggings. And there we were, miles from anywhere and nobody but a wedge tailed eagle for company. But – relief – Bill had forgotten to tighten some lid or other, and, this done, all was well. No camel necessary this time.