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The Old Ghan line at William Creek, SA

IF YOU’RE LUCKY enough to zip up through the Red Centre of Australia in the air-conditioned comfort of the sleek, silver modern Ghan, spare a thought for those who rattled along in its original namesake. The Old Ghan railway lies some 150km east of the modern line with its termite-proof concrete sleepers and state-of the art rolling stock, and while the modern Ghan keeps strictly to a published timetable, the Old Ghan was notoriously unreliable. Construction of the first track, The Great Northern Line, began in 1878 when a narrow-gauge line was laid between Port Augusta and Oodnadatta. The first service was known as the “Oodnadatta Night Train” and it took another 50 years for the line to reach Alice Springs (then called Stuart). It became known as The ’Ghan,…

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Australian Geographic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July/August 2019

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