Day Three & Arrival - Indian Pacific

After a much better sleep we wake up to a beautiful sunrise over the red flat land what we foreigners would know as the proper outback. The train slowed down so we could all take pictures of a random house near the tracks the was built by a man named Iggy made out of tin sheeting and wood. After 12 hours of travelling from Adelaide we entered the Nullabor Plains. It is an area in Australia that is flat and red with random bushes but trees cannot grow in this area. So like Saskatchewan but Saskatchewan is more colourful….well different colours I guess. We stopped in one of the only towns around. The town of Cook. It is pretty much a ghost town. It has a row of houses, a school, bathrooms, two little sheds known as the gaols, and a souvenir shop. Most of these buildings are not in use anymore. There are 5 people, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 30 dingos and 20 CHICKS, pet goanna. I am assuming one of their only incomes is their souvenir shop for the people that come off for a rest stop from the train. It used to have 130 people back in 1975 when one of the ladies lived there as a child. It used to have a post office, hospital, tradesmen and the main thing in the town, the railway. It is approx. 1000 kms from Adelaide, approx 1300 kms from Perth, 875kms from Kalgoorie. The outback is north of them for many kilometres and 200 kms south is the Ocean. This small little ghost town has had telestra come and set up internet, fax, phone, and mobile. So even though they are in the middle of nowhere they are pretty in tune with the rest of the world. In the summer time it can get as hot as 50 degrees, cooling down 20 degrees at night time.

In the 1850’s 10,000 camels were shipped over to Australia from the Arabic Nation. It ended up being perfect desert living conditions for them. When men wanted to discover the rest of Australia or build rainways or towns in this area they would use camels instead of horses because they could handle the hot weather and the workload better. Apparently camels can go for many days without water and have long eyelashes to protect their eyes from the sand. We saw a couple camels randomly in the Plains. They had a little information playing about them as we saw them. Apparently they have populated so much that they are starting to ship them back.

Around 8:30 pm (but with the time change it ended up being 6:30 pm) we arrived in a city called Kalgoorie (Aussies pronounce it without the R, of course.). This city is a mining city. For years they have been mining gold. It has Australia’s biggest open cast mine. We got to go up to the Super Pit and see them working. It is 1 ½ km wide, 4 km long and 500 meters deep. It was a pretty cool site (sight) haha. The towns history is a pretty dirty one. It was a mining city full of single men so it had many brothels and the bars used to attract the men with their topless bar maids. Today they actually still have 3 brothels running. They are on the same street the police station so that they can be monitored. We actually drove by the brothels and girls came to the door to wave. And the bars still have women, not topless, but scantily clad. There is one bar that has four pictures of the top skimpy bar maids on the outside. Each month it changes. On a more nicer note, the city is much more family oriented. It has one of the best schools in the world for mining and there are about 30,000 people that live there. They also have one of the biggest races in Australia (that is actually going on at this moment.) Sounds like it as a typical western town back in the day.

Last night was a very good sleep! We woke up at 5:30, watched the sunrise and got excited to finally arrive in Perth in 4 hours. I finished reading My Sister's Keeper. Good book. I also tried knitting and messed up horrible and now I have to undo everything I did...grrr. Now, David and I are finally with Juli. We will spend the next two days with her and her cousin. Then on Monday we leave to go to the farm for three months! Nice time for change!! David and I blogged everyday of the trip and I seperated the days into their own blogs. So look at the blogs previous to this.

Anyways, time to upload photos and catch up with Juli!