General Chat

Oh dear, Berona.

Alas, you may have been duped. The operators of the Indian Pacific ( also the Ghan, Overlander etc) are Great Southern Rail, a private company, which has to hire the lines the trains run on.

Tessa, I'm not a travel writer, more of a fictional writer :-D Whether it is my writing which is fictional, or myself, remains to be seen.

I haven't yet completed my next chapter of this sorry saga but will do so asap

I am enjoying your story. Tell me, are you a travel writer?

Will check in again tomorrow (Sunday).

Might even renew my passport after reading about your adventures.

Allan - our Govt. Railways dept. is extremely proud of it's Indian Pacific and Ghan trains. I hope none of their reps are reading this thread! They will be extremely upset.

As for your story. Have you been talking to wheelie bins on your morning walks again?

Now thats what i call a good start .50p Ann bless .how long are we saving for .make way for two of us at least :-D

Hello Ann

If you could give me a link to the thread I'll give it some thought :-)

allan, who said anything about responsible???

Barbra, I've got 50p.

Nudging up for the night shift

Nudge :-)

LOL........... Allan a good time was had by all then, truly
a holiday of a lifetime.
Can't wait for the adventure to begin again. :-D

Emma x

lol Barbra

As I am about to sign off now for the night, could someone please keep this going for those in the various time zones/

I'l be back tomorrow at about 5.00 am (WA time)

Goodnight to all

Allan

Now come on Ladies* hmm*.think we should all be saving our spending money .& then we can join Allan & his OH on our *there* next Dream holiday .i have £1.50.up to know .so what do you think ?? :-D xx
PS. hope you didnt forget to put toilet seat down know what you men are like :-D ;-)

:-D

Ann, I'm afraid that my scribblings are most basic in the extreme. I rely on sarcasm, irony, and a fair degree of self-deprecating humour. Not really suited to a responsible writing group

Lol, thank you Allan. Have you never considered joining the writing group on here? :-D

lol Berona. I thought that I recognised the bouquet when we alighted at Cook for 20 minutes or so :-D

Allan - do you remember about a couple of years ago, you said you had sent me a package of flowers, but you only had a 1cent stamp and were too mean to buy any more?

As I told you then, they never arrived and I'm wondering if you might have seen them wilting somewhere when you crossed the Nullabor?

I love the account of your trip. If enough people see it, I can see the I.P. going out of business! Oh well, it only costs a fraction of the rail fare to fly - and only a fraction of the time, too.

Awaiting the next installment.

Pt 2 Our voyage begins

There, the Captain of our vessel must have taken pity on us for he greeted us and said that he’d be delighted to show us the galley.

Having spent at least two hours amongst the rotten meat and dark, shadowy, entrails, it was nice that the Captain had such a confidence in his shipboard kitchen.

Now, I may be slow and have an IQ that sometimes slithers off to sleep under a rock, but even I could not help but be taken aback!

There, between those two magnificent cruise ships, m/v ‘Rapture of the Deep’ and the m/v ‘Good Ship…’ (I couldn’t see the rest of the name as it was obscured) was our……..Galley??

You had to peer over the quayside to see it, but nevertheless, there it was
The top deck had two masts, then there were three lower decks, whose portholes appeared to be without any glass.

“All Right!” barked the captain, “Get them on Board”. At this command the rest of what we presumed to be the crew appeared. What a motley bunch! Between them they had fifteen wooden legs, several hooks for hands, enough eye patches to service the full crew of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film series, and a dead parrot.

More than anything else, this last really engrossed us.

As we stared at this pitiful object, our embarkation became another hit and miss affair.

The passengers hit the deck, having been assisted over the quayside by two burly members of crew who did not believe in gangways or other devices to assist in boarding, but did believe in the power of gravity.

Next followed our luggage: this totally missing the deck, or any other part of the ship, and was soon floating out to sea on the tide.

One brave soul, who had recovered from his rapid descent to the deck sooner than the rest of us, asked about the allocation of cabins, adding that he wanted an outside twin.

The captain merely grinned and said that all the accommodation had an outside view, however it was more of a group thing than an individual style of sleeping.

Alarm bells started ringing, and as the Galley didn’t appear to be serviced by electricity, these must have been in our heads.

Then the accommodation was allocated.

“Lower Deck: middle deck: upper deck”

“Lower Deck: middle deck: upper deck”

This litany continued until all passengers had been accounted for and accompanied by the crew to their new quarters. This was not easy, for as we descended and entered our quarters the light grew ever less and we were constantly impeded in our progress by spars of timber.

The next thing we knew was that we were being chained to said spars: women next to men and men next to women in a random pattern.

Under other circumstances, and if you were into that sort of thing, this could have been most enjoyable. However, now we were filled with an unholy terror as the full implications of our situation dawned on us.

I was chained next to a veritable harridan, a shrew, whose language would make a sailor blush and give even a fishwife pause for thought. Only as my eyes grew used to the stygian blackness of the deck did I recognise my OH!

I thought it diplomatic not to remind my wife that it had been her idea to come on this cut-price holiday. One of my wife’s redeeming features is that she never goes to sleep on an argument. One of her less redeeming features is that she can go several days without sleep!!

more to follow

lol Ann. The absolute truth.

The bathroom of the hotel we sayed in in Afdelaide (although situated as described above) was bigger than our entire sleping compartment on the train :-)

* tries to imagine a fold away toilet* :-D

Hi Ingrid. In all seriousness I believe that the Indian Pacific is cutting back on its services. Too much competition from cheap airfares.

I actually enjoyed the train trip although the sleeping compartments are on the small side with, believe it or not, fold away toilets and wash basins in the en-suite bathroom.

The trip across the Nullabor was boring but the scenery on either side was magnificent