A trip on the Ghan
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Old Traces Old Faceswritten by Jim Downes photography by Berthold Daum |
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Old Traces Old Faceswritten by Jim Downes photography by Berthold Daum |
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Outback Australia is crossed by a network of roads and paths
known as Tracks. Some follow traditional trade routes of Aboriginal tribes,
others the paths of original white explorers. Others are newer, connecting
station to station, camp to camp.One of the most colorful in history and
route is the Oodnadatta Track.
It links the original
Ghan line at Oodnadatta with the new track, the new township, Marla, 218
kilometres away. It leads from Oodnadatta south to Marree and eventually
to Port Augusta. At Marree, it meets the legendary Birdsville Track to
Queensland, skirting the north-eastern edge of the Simpson Desert. The track
has carried the feet of Aborigines, the boots of explorers, the hooves of
camels, and now the tyres of trucks and
cars.
It offers access to what traces remain of the original Ghan railway, and
in isolated and now near-abandoned railway settlements live still some of
the people whose lives were the old
railway.
... Reg Dodd saw in 1957 the narrow gauge track replaced by broad gauge
(5’3") as far as Marree, which became a change of gauge station with
a population of 350, mostly railworkers employed to transfer freight from
broad to narrow gauge vehicles. At its peak, Marree handled fifty trains
each week. But delays in trans-shipment meant freight took seven days from
Adelaide to Alice Springs. Road trucks took 24 hours, the railway couldn’t
compete and its days were numbered. The passenger train ran fortnightly,
the freighter in the alternate weeks. Locals named the passenger train the
Flash Ghan, a wry comment on its average speed and its sleeping berths and
dining car. The goods train they called the Dirty Ghan.
Old NSU locomotive at Marree
The land reclaims its own: The one time railway is rusting and rotting back
into nature. The scrap men have been and gone. All they’ve left is the
unsellable and the irremovable....
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