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In August 1929, a train carrying about 100 passengers steamed into a tiny railway town called Stuart, just near the telegraph repeater station at Alice Springs. It was the first to travel from Adelaide to central Australia, and was to gain its name from a joke: when the sole passenger to disembark at Oodnadatta was a Pakistani worker, a local wit (assuming the man to be from Afghanistan) dubbed the train The Afghan Express. The name was shortened to the Ghan, and it stuck. The original Ghan made a weekly round trip between Adelaide and the Alice, fighting the harsh elements - at one point it was stopped by floods for two weeks. When the food ran out, the driver went out and shot wild goats to feed the passengers. Today's Ghan is a sleek, stainless-steel affair which, while less adventurous, ferries travellers through the oddities and beauties of central Australia.

The train's history is told in a new book The Ghan: From Adelaide to Alice (lichtbild, rrp $34.95) by Jim Downes and Berthold Daum. The book notes that while technological progress has made the trip more comfortable, things still move slowly in the outback: folk are still waiting for the second half of the railway line, from Alice Springs to Darwin, to be built. All in good time.

Good Weekend, July 13, 1996: (Sydney Morning Herald Magazine, The Age)

Every one of us has a train or coach trip that sticks in our memories for its pleasures or discomfort, but few can claim a train journey in which the driver shot wild goats to feed the passengers. That did happen on the first Ghan when it was stranded by floodwaters in Outback Australia and the incident is recalled in the book "The Ghan", the story of the train that travels between Adelaide, S.A., and Alice Springs, N.T. Author is Jim Downes, well-remembered for his journalism on Australia television. Photographs are by award-winning Berthold Daum and from archives. The laconic style of Downes's reporting suits this book. He paints his word pictures with the minimum of fuss, just as you might expect things to have been on The Ghan.. Contributing writers tell their stories in the same vein. There's more in the pages than recounting a train journey. There's reflection on how land was asked to deliver something it never could, how bad decisions on farming, the search for minerals and feral animals have changed the environment forever. There's reference to the contribution made by Torres Strait Islanders and European refugees to the expansion of rail in Australia's vast inland. The story of cameleers, the people who provided the transport away from the railheads, in "The Ghan" is about a multiculturalism (and assimilation) that can be found there today only in traces. One such trace is the names of the people ... and of the train. The train The Ghan is more about tourism today than the movement of goods and people for business. Steam trains hiss and puff at a railway museum and disused stations serve as restaurants and museums. It pays its way with 75 per cent capacity heading north and a great appeal to Victorians. The book "The Ghan" does have a chapter on technical detail, but sets out to be a good read rather than an unassailable authority. In that, it succeeds admirably with its coverage, clever design use of photographs and instant appeal.

Rotary Down Under, September 1996

- This is a marvellous book -

Bert Newton, Good morning Australia, Channel 10