This outback train journey just got more epic. Here’s what to expect

The surface of my tea ripples, threatening to breach the lip of the white porcelain cup as it wiggles in micro-measures on a saucer atop the foldout table in my cosy Indian Pacific cabin. At points, the milky brown colour matches the great golden expanse outside my window, the amber end-of-harvest plains of the South Australian wheat belt, illuminated by the rising sun on the second morning of our five-day journey from Perth to Sydney.

Tea becomes a constant companion on my solo trip. With each sip, I relax; with each kilometre we pass, the walk from my cabin to the lounge car becomes a little more familiar, my ability to handle the unexpected sways and lurches more competent.

I had dreamed about travelling across Australia by train since I was a little girl, eager to share a carriage on The Ghan with my adored grandmother, Guylia, after seeing a pamphlet on a shelf at my local small-town travel agent and marvelling at the sheer scale of the metal snake slithering through the outback.

Decades later, and four months after Journey Beyond’s launch of the Indian Pacific’s five-day itinerary (extending the longstanding two-night journey twofold), I set foot on the west-to-east sibling of the north-to-south Ghan. I’m travelling alone; my grandmother – still adventurous but no longer willing to travel across timezones – has chosen to settle for written missives.

The women of this train route – whether 35 or 70 – share so many skills, lessons and quirks that remind me of the 84-year-old Guylia back in Illinois; I quickly learn that she’s with me, just not in ways I expect. Such is the magic of this 55-year-old route, with roots growing since 1917.

Capable, passionate and clever general manager Brittney Howe (who has run these trains for 15 years) tells us the train has just downsized, transitioning from 34 carriages to a more intimate 28. It buzzes, rumbles and lurches, singing to its own tune in a constant soundtrack that responds to the gentle undulations of Western Australia, SA and New South Wales.

Our total journey is 4352 kilometres, which, considering my flight from Sydney to Perth was 3331 kilometres, is a massive expanse of the continent. The train’s name, Indian Pacific, is an homage to that, bridging the two oceans that surround the terminal cities.

We will traverse 16 unique landscapes, which means – when we’re not gallivanting around Kalgoorlie, the Barossa Valley, Cook, Broken Hill and Katoomba during our curated off-train experiences – we have front-row seats to the only-in-the-outback performance from here to the horizon. My 1100-centimetre cabin window frames this fast-moving scene-change best.

As we cross the Nullarbor, trees lay where they fell months, years, decades ago, their grey branches like calcified hands reaching towards the train tracks. Further along, the bleached bones of a bovine flash against the red pindan and nature’s scars are clearly seen: anaemic, burnt black trunks grasp skywards, the ribbon-like tattoos of once-running water trace through arid patches of red dirt.

There are so many shades of green despite the dry: dusty, chalky greens and deep olives shades and near-blue green-greys that disappear with the onset of dusk. As we head further east, the greens turn to more neutral tones of bulbous saltbush and yellowing spinifex that hide wallabies and long-forgotten windsocks. As we cross WA on day one, a distant patch of red looks out of place. As we pull past it turns out to be two rusting sedans balancing on their bonnets, boots to the sky.

Solo travel on the Indian Pacific is not uncommon and the kind crew – including an attentive young crewmember named Giulia, whose similarity to my grandmother’s name is not lost on me – are highly attuned to it. For our first meal, I sit with Karine, a chemist from France who I met on the platform in Perth, and two Canadian sisters, Barbara and Ida. They’re humorous and happy to have a yarn, and we swap stories about our journeys around the world.

Karine, who will depart two days later in Adelaide to tackle the Flinders Ranges by foot, is especially excited about exploring the Super Pit in Kalgoorie; Barb and Ida will continue on, with me, to Sydney. At one point, Barb and Ida share stories of their late father, and Ida cracks a joke, clutching my elbow while giggling at her own humour in the very same way my grandmother does.

The design of the dining and bar carriages is that, in four-person booths and long lounges, camaraderie becomes non-negotiable while you’re tucking into plates of pan-fried swordfish and bowls of rich pumpkin soup. It adds a reliable verve to the trip, which is infinitely customisable at so many other intersections: which of four options would you like as your main tonight? Which off-train experiences will you choose? In which cabin, of three categories, will you lay your ear-plugged head?

Mingling onboard is a pleasure but I enjoy solitude in my cabin, too, captivated as I watch kangaroos jolt across unending flatness. I spot my first wild emu, chasing the train alongside a neck-high fence, and write notes for when I call my grandmother upon our Sydney arrival, swirls of green ink in a notebook that can’t keep up with the speed of my excitement.

Our stop in the ghost-like Cook (population: four) is an essential. Here, we meet caretaker Michelle Lutze, whose smile and aptitude for getting things done reminds me of Guylia yet again: both grew up working the land, both wear a pair of overalls with style, both have the cheerful, resilient “get-on-with-it” attitude that’s essential to living remotely. After she shows me some of the abandoned buildings with her torch, I snag a tipple of tawny and settle in for a guided cosmos talk, while side-eyeing dusty crossroads for apparitions.

Another day, we pull through Rawlinna to drop off mail and equipment to Nicole Gray, who lives on the 30,000- plus hectare Kybo Station with partner Greg Campbell. If we were coming the other way, arriving from the east in the evening, we’d stop here for a track-side dinner beneath hung festoon lights, with Gray curating a menu to be enjoyed beneath the stars. Instead, we pause for 10 minutes in the middle of the afternoon while Gray and IP guest experience manager Damien Rawlings swap stories and exchange empty mailbags for full ones. When we pull away, Gray becomes a tiny flash with a wave attached.

In Broken Hill, we explore the Living Desert and its collection of 12 sandstone sculptures carved in situ by artists from around the world. One, Under the Jaguar Sun by Mexican artist Antonio Nava Tirado, has a hole in the centre that frames the endless scrubby plateau as a myopic circle of indistinguishable colour, texture and spatiality. A few million years earlier and we’d be looking at something very different, and the sheer magnificence of the Australian landscape silences me.

I’m contemplating this when we arrive at The Old Salt Bush (theoldsaltbush.com.au), a bush foods-centric restaurant in a 137-year-old former pub on Broken Hill’s main strip. Chef-owner Lee Cecchin is bubbly and bright and makes unwavering eye contact when she shares Australia’s native bounty, encouraging us to guess what we’re eating when we taste powdered wattleseed, caviar-like balls of fingerlime and dried leaves of saltbush.

We pass around slices of kangaroo steak, emu pies, and boards of DIY pavlova. Out the back, Cecchin shows us her work-in-progress bushfoods garden. When I see the upright piano she’s turned into a bar for the private dining area, my heartstrings tug again; its insides are the same malty colour as the piano at which my grandmother taught me to play. I watch Cecchin watching me as I marvel at it and this moment, belly full of lovingly made food.

For our last meal onboard, I sit with Barb, Ida and new companion Emily as the sun drops in loud splashes of orange. After the lamb roast, we gravitate to the lounge bar for farewell nightcaps. (It’s premature given we still have the next day to explore the Blue Mountains en route to Sydney.) The onboard musician hoists a guitar onto his lap.

A fellow traveller takes over the mike to belt out Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love to raised glasses. On this final stretch between oceans – “Like a river flows surely to the sea” – I feel cradled in the company of new friends, kindred spirits and the warm reminder that human connection means we’re never really solo at all: “Darling, so it goes. Some things are meant to be.”

The details

Rail
The Indian Pacific five-day journey from Perth to Sydney departs on Saturdays throughout the year. Cabins start from $4300 a person, with Gold, Gold Premium and Platinum cabins available as well as Chairman’s carriages and – from April 2026 – private Aurora and Australis suites. The trip is all-inclusive, with a comprehensive selection of meals, alcohol and off-train excursions included. Wi-Fi is intermittent in remote and regional parts of Australia, but it is usually available in the lounge car for free guest use. See journeybeyondrail.com.au

The writer travelled as a guest of the Indian Pacific and Journey Beyond.