The Ghan

node · earth · South Australia and the Northern Territory

The Adelaide–Alice Springs and, since 2004, Adelaide–Darwin service across central Australia. From August 1929 it ran on the Central Australia Railway, a 1,067 mm narrow-gauge line laid on a bad alignment through country subject to flash flooding and washaways. The answer was not to repair it but to abandon it: a new standard-gauge line was built well to the west via Tarcoola, and the last narrow-gauge Ghan left Marree on 25 November 1980. The extension north from Alice Springs to Darwin opened in January 2004, and the first through train left Adelaide on 1 February 2004, reaching Darwin on 3 February. It is the clearest case in this Journey of a route that was moved rather than inherited, because the original survey was simply wrong.