It’s hard to believe I have been in the NT for 6 months already. Some of that is due to the current lockdown issues of course, but it is not all bad. It has been hot and I have experienced a reasonable Wet season, so that was good to see.
So, not a lot is happening during lockdown so life just potters on as usual. I have been going for walks through the bush around here, which is nice when it is not too hot.
A Very Brief History of Railway in the Northern Territory
Bear with me, there is a reason for this little historic interlude!
The desire to link Adelaide and Darwin by rail was a very early one. It was envisaged that South Australian goods would be railed to Darwin and then shipped to Asia and the world.
The narrow gauge railway commenced building north from Port Augusta in 1878 and reached Oodnadatta in South Australia in 1891. If you then wanted to travel onward to Alice Springs, you went by camel, or bullock, or horse or maybe even bicycle – you get the idea, right?
Along the way, this enigmatic little railway earned the name: ‘The Ghan’.
Oodnadatta remained the railhead until 1926 when the railway extended northwards, reaching Alice Springs in 1929. And that was that, until…
In the early 1980s, a new standard gauge track joining Adelaide and Alice Springs was built 160km to the west of the original line (which was subject to floods and delays, but that is another story, worthy of its own post at a future time).
In 2001, the building of the line north from Alice Springs to Darwin commenced. Adelaide and Darwin were finally joined by railway in February 2004, a mere 126 years after building first commenced…
Now Back to the Present – Sort Of
So, while they were building the railway from the south, they sort of started building it from the north, too.
Just out the back, a few hundred metres from my camper, is the remains of the old North Australia Railway. Part of the grand plan to link Adelaide to Darwin, building the narrow gauge railway from north to south commenced in Darwin in 1889.
By WW2 it had reached Larrimah, about 430km from Darwin and still at least 1000km from Alice Springs, where the southern railway terminated. Everything had to be trucked to and fro along the Stuart Highway (which at that time was a single lane dirt road, affectionately known as ‘The Track’).
Well, that’s as far as it went really, until 2004 when the new railway opened, finally linking Adelaide and Darwin. But this certainly was a busy little railway, especially during the war years – in 1944, up to 247 trains ran per week on this line.
The old railway was closed in 1976 and sank into oblivion. Not much remains today. Rails and sleepers are gone but the ballast still shows where this dream once existed.
The new railway was laid 12km to the east of Batchelor and the town lost its station and its railway link to the outside world. Today, if you wish to visit Batchelor, a car is really the only means to get here.
There are dingoes around, too. They often have a bit of a howl around the town at night, which is an amazingly mournful sound, a little bit sad and also a little bit scary – think Hounds of the Baskervilles… It is kind of funny though, after the dingoes stop howling, all the town dogs start barking; I guess it is their response to the dingoes and it doesn’t sound very friendly. But in my book, the dingoes have the better call.
I do see the dingo tracks in the dirt when I go for my walks and by the looks of those, these are big dingoes.
So, to the Earthquake!
Sitting up reading the other night, the whole camper suddenly started swaying and I have to say, it was a little disconcerting. Looking around in amazement, I could hear a low rumble and I realized we were experiencing an earthquake.
Now the camper normally sits quite happily on its four legs and is usually quite steady, even when I move around inside. But when the earth is moving, it does wobble about, quite a bit!
The earthquake seemed to go on for quite a while, but in actuality it was probably not as long as it seemed. When it did finish, there was deadly silence for a few seconds and then all the birds roosting in the trees around here went crazy, squawking and carrying on!
I guess if something shakes your tree, it’s something to get upset about…
Speaking of birds, the lorikeets are still coming in for their feed in the evenings.
We also have a few rabbits hopping around, so prepare for a cuteness overload!
These are escaped domestic rabbits and seem to like our company. That could be because we come armed with carrot and apple for their evening nibbles.
Of course, it doesn’t pay to get too attached, as the rabbits do provide a nice meal for the raptors, dogs and snakes that are prolific around here. We have seen a few generations come – and go – over the months!
Now that the dry is here, clouds are a distant memory, so awesome sunsets are now getting rarer. This one was probably one of the last amazing ones, so there might not be too many sunset shots for a while.
The evenings are getting a bit cooler, so I needed to dig out a long-sleeved shirt to wear. It has been dropping to 15oC overnight, which is freezing for up here. But the daytime temperatures can still hit the mid-30s. So I am rather pleased I am up here and not down south, where I hear it seems to be fairly cool.
