Traveling Coast-To-Coast on Australia’s Longest Train Ride

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) January 10, 2012 -- January 10, 2012 – Do you have a tourist visa for Australia? If you have an Australian tourist visa, then you will be free to travel on Australia’s longest train journey!

All adventurers, may it be the local Aussies or the regular tourists on Australia travel visa, can experience a ride on Australia’s longest train voyage, the flat Indian Pacific coast-to-coast journey from Sydney to Perth.

Those who want to return to the simplicity of an elegantly ageing décor of the late ’60s or early ’70s, with the soothing din of minor rattles, bumps, scrapes, buzzes, squeaks and groans of machinery, shaking timber, and metal that can relax a passenger like a massage for the ears, then ride on the Transcontinental passenger rail Indian Pacific.

The Indian Pacific is a twice-weekly passenger rail service running between Perth and Sydney, with the whole journey taking 65 hours.
Onboard the train, guests can either settle into their cabin or seat.

Tourists on Australia tourist visa will surely enjoy the simple pleasures that the transcontinental train could bring as they can stay on any of the three classes of accommodation branded as: Platinum, Gold Kangaroo and Red Kangaroo.

Introduced in 2008, the Platinum Service is a premium class of travel. The Gold Kangaroo formerly the first class service features either roomette or twinette sleeper cabins, with complimentary meals in the restaurant car. Both Platinum and Gold Service has a hospitality attendant that will stop by your cabin to make sure you are comfortable and explain how to use the cabin facilities and answer any questions you may have. A lounge is the centre of activity, where you can relax over a drink or meet new friends from all corners of the world.

The Red Kangaroo service the equivalent of economy class features either airline-style ’sit-up’ seats similar to other Australian trains, or dual-berth shared sleeper cabins. The Red Service Guests have access to the train’s fully licensed Red Service Diner a great place to indulge in the ever-changing view from panoramic windows, or enjoy a drink or two while socializing with friends, new or old. The Diner offers affordable and tasty light meals, snacks and drinks for purchase.

It is the absence of TV and other distracting media that defines the actual experience.

If there is someone in your life driving you crazy whining about how they are stressed, too busy, or suffering from “information overload” and lacking the time to think, point them towards this train.

The Indian Pacific is all about enjoying and remembering how profoundly essential they are.

Consider where you get ideas, clear your mind – on the loo, in the shower, walking the dog – times and places where there is not silence but a lack of media noise. Train sounds are repetitive, meditative for hours and days, not minutes.

The eyes get treated to a widescreen panorama of evolving landscape. Just looking out the window becomes a transfixing activity – one can get psychedically hypnotized by the gradual transformation of the landscape from city to suburb to hilly town to steep Blue Mountains ridges to dairy hillsides, then plain and desert as the train leaves Sydney and enters the immensity of Australia’s innards.

The timber-panelled, rectangular Gold Class cabin I inhabited featured mirrors on the facing wall and on the back of the door to the right, as if to make it feel larger. And the concealed bathroom (soon to be upgraded) featured a fold-down toilet and felt a little cramped.

But the cozy, neat, retro space seemed boundless once one succumbed to the comfy couch to gaze at the countryside. The window dominates like the biggest hi-tech home theatre screen. Now showing: a unique feature film concept – Australia, a riveting documentary starring more emus than actors.

If one takes a break from this scenic showcase, to indulge the pleasures of reading or snoozing, the remaining stimulation on offer is no less nourishing for the urban soul – conversation and fine wine and dining, in the fittingly elegant and demure bar and Outback Explorer restaurant.

There is time to get to know a stranger, or converse more deeply with a friend or loved one. There is none of the interruptions that usually thwart decent conversations. And if you get tired of anyone, the sanctuary of your cabin awaits.

Two times a day, you nook is transformed in your absence. At dinner time, your bed is prepared, and in the morning while you are out, the cabin is cleaned and the bed again becomes a comfortable sofa. No time is wasted on mundanities, so you can concentrate on your thoughts and impressions.

There were several British folk on the trips, all keen to experience the fabled Aussie outback. Often, one learns most about one’s own backyard through the eyes of foreigners, and by trying to answer their questions.

British expectations of Australia were upheld by the remorseless consistency of the Nullarbor Plain, and the cheery, rural-style hospitality of their hosts.

One of the festive season’s stops was a Nullarbor ’station’ called Watson, which possessed no platform and no sign to denote its existence. Singer-in-residence Jessica Mauboy made the leap from the train on to the stony desert to perform acoustically to indigenous kids who had been trucked in from as far as 300 kilometres away. One of the children spontaneously and shyly embraced the part-indigenous singer, and she reciprocated for the entirety of her song. It was a genuinely touching moment for both artist and fan.

To Australian city-slickers, such remarkable moments, the warm, unpretentious service, and the awe-inspiring scenery of this journey feel like reminders of the truth behind some old cliché’s about our country.

There is something mystical about the outback. It changes your sense of time. The trip is comfortable and luxurious, but you feel like more than three days have passed when you step off in Perth. You have been through something, you have changed a little. You have travelled for hours past and through landscapes that alter only imperceptibly every hour, or two hours, regions which seem to exist to amaze, bemuse, stupefy with their barren grandeur.

And with the trivial hassles of everyday work and life, subtracted, such scenery, the rewarding chats, the epicurean indulgence and meditation have performed a three day health spa on your head, your soul.

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http://www.nationalvisas.com.au/blog/australian-news/traveling-coast-to-coast-on-australias-longest-train-ride/

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