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Where The Desert Is An Inland Sea
ueensland Railway’s
freight train 7A90 lurches The Gulf Country, I soon found,
forward 30 metres, then is an endless sea of red dust,
backs up 40, and an hour after picked-clean gold mines and
departing 50 minutes late, sits 200,000 acre cattle stations
10 metres behind the starting stretching from the Arafura Sea
point. And that’s a typical near the Gulf of Carpentaria on
itinerary for the 24-hour or more Australia’s northern coast to the
journey from Cairns on the one Great Dividing Range.
and only freight train to the Queensland’s better know features
Gulf Country. There are eight like the Great Barrier Reef, cane
scheduled stops, but in reality fields and rainforest are
the train makes innumerable halts represented on maps with marlins
as it doles out supplies along leaping from the sea,
the way like a modern day cargo kaleidoscopic coral and lush
cult. I was part of the cult, tropical foliage.
taking up space in a little-used
passenger wagon attached The map for the Gulf Country my
somewhere behind the livestock holiday destination has no glossy
car. tourism photos, just red-stamped
paradoxical quotes which do
I could have taken a hint from little to lure visitors: “Lakes
the hiccupped departure and and water courses rarely contain
disembarked before the looney water unless they are flooded”
adventure into the remoteness of and “The desert may be an inland
Australia’s outback began. But sea during the rainy season.”
there was typhoon heading for Translated, it means there is no
Cairns and a slow freight train water when you need it and when
to nowhere seemed preferable to a you find it, you’ll be stuck.
tropical storm.
Probably the 19th century
explorer Captain Stokes, who Besides Sean, a peroxide-haired
declared the Gulf Country the salad chef/blues singer from New
“plains of Promise”, hadn’t seen Zealand and myself, three other
the same map I had. His passengers wrestled tickets from
declaration started the gold rush unwilling staff. As the whistle
which lasted until typhoid wiped blew (The first time), a tall,
out the adventurers, leaving the bowlegged ringer with a swag,
area sparsely populated even saddle and tuxedo loped across
today. the track. This textbook
Australian was heading for a new
The 7A90 is the Gulf Country’s job on a station so large they
lifeline, carrying once-weekly use helicopters, not horses, to
loads of mail, food and building herd cattle. Ricky the ringer
supplies going and rocks, waste hung the mysterious tuxedo well
paper and wild horses on the away from the swag a
return. The train sat like a multi-layered canvas bedroll that
pariah in the drizzly darkness on smelled of horses and too many
the wrong side of the tracks, nights under the stars.
removed from Queensland Railway’s
star, the heavily advertised “I hunt ’roos, mate,” reports
commentary passenger train to Mickey, while Sean prepares a
Kuranda. If railway staff hadn’t light snack of crudités. Mickey
denied the existence of the and Jen are from Bourke, as in
vintage passenger car, I wouldn’t the Australian term “the Back of
have been so determined to find Bourke”, meaning bush country in
it. I’m told they worry that the middle of nowhere.
unprepared travellers will go
bonkers mid-journey and demand an The cook and I were the only ones
airlift to civilization. with no reason for going bush
except that we both were tired of where progress is eked out in
rain. A train buff, I wanted to fits and starts while waiting for
add a vintage, working, not for flood waters to subside, track to
tourists railway car to my list be replaced and rubble removed
of trains traveled. The 7A90’s from the path.
original brass hat racks, leather
banquettes (attractive, but not While waiting for a bridge to be
for sleeping on while jostling repaired, we’re dropped almost at
over track) and varnished the door of a bush pub that
hardwood panels decorated with appears out of nowhere. In towns
sepia photos of previous like Mt Surprise (and
passengers (all dead, I noted surprise-there’s no mountain in
later) added to its appeal. sight), pubs are the hub of
outback life. Regulars claim
As the eight scheduled stops and reserved seats at the bar. They
numerous other unexplained halts tell anyone who cares to hear,
clicked off, the Gulf Country and often those who don’t, about
reared up as an endless ocean of the boom days of the mines. Now
dust replacing postcard the only fossicking they do is in
Queensland. There is probably no their pockets for beer money.
better way to understand the
vastness of Australia’s bush After the town of Mareeba on the
country than to creep 323 flat-topped Atherton Tablelands,
kilometres into the outback on a it’s all bush country. Despite a
leisurely-paced train. whistle blowing periodically
throughout the night, screeching
It’s a casual journey with an wheels and a searchlight sweeping
accommodating three-person staff the tracks, the dawdling pace
viewing the occasional passenger allows us to sneak up on animals
as a welcome diversion on a trip streaking toward eery ghost gums
with incandescent bark glowing in outback institution that gets
the moonlight. When surprised, far-flung singles together for
the animals send up a cacophony serious partying.
more often heard in a zoo at
feeding time. From Einslagh, the train arcs
along wide curves winding through
Kangaroos and wallabies bouncing the craggy Newcastle Range where
across the track spark the track is suspended from sheer
interest of the hunter and his rock faces. Thick forest is lit
missus. Exotic birds like galahs by a blur and white headlight,
and cockatoos and bush turkeys creating a theatre set of cumulus
wing away in clouds of soft-hued tree canopy in silhouette. When
designer colours of pink and the train grinds to a halt 70
grey. Rare black cockatoos are a kilometres later, no one expects
common sight. it to be Forsyth, the end of the
line, where a huge meal, kept
The technicolour red and gold warm in the kitchen of the
sighn of Einslagh’s pub is a Goldfields Tavern, waits.
welcome beacon after 270
kilometres of scrub. The The sound of furiously whinnying
Copperfield River, with banks brumbies, wild horses of the
guarded by supposedly gregarious outback, signals the start of the
freshwater crocodiles, sluices return journey. Ringers whistle
past the tavern. The ringer and snap lassos to herd the
disappears here in a cloud of animals into freight cars.
dust, tuxedo in hand, in a hurry
to get 80 kilometres away just in With no major bridges washed away
time to make the annual station and goods delivered, there’s
B&S ball, black tie optional. little diversion on the return
That’s Bachelor and Spinster, an journey except for the same pubs
with the same pies and beer desert may be an inland sea, and
delivered the day before. After pulls into Cairns where the skies
60 or so hours the 7A90 leaves are sunny again.
the Gulf Country, where the
Truman Tyler is the professional freelance writer. He's also the webmaster of Kornup.com
Published At: www.Isnare.com
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