Face of Nation : Australia’s transcontinental railway, the Ghan, will mark 90 years of operation with a commemorative service that pulls out of Adelaide this weekend.
With 235 passengers on board, the special service will leave on Sunday morning to make the 3000-kilometre, three-day journey to Darwin. This trip includes a special stop at Pimba where guests will enjoy an open-air concert to mark the rail line’s anniversary.
Artists performing will include Shane Howard from Australian rock band Goanna, Christine Anu, Joe Camilleri from the Black Sorrows and Adam Thompson from Chocolate Starfish. One carriage on the train will also be converted into an art-deco inspired hat shop where guests can be personally fitted for an Akubra while enjoying a glass of champagne.
The Ghan’s first service left Adelaide on August 4, 1929, when the rail line from Adelaide only extended as far as Alice Springs. That remained the case until 2004 when the long-held ambition of successive federal governments was finally realised and the line through to Darwin was completed at a cost of $1.3 billion.
At the time it was considered the second biggest civil engineering project in the nation’s history, behind only the Snowy Mountains hydro electric scheme. The managing director of the company which operates the Ghan, Steve Kernaghan, said the service had evolved considerably over nine decades.
It had gone from a link between Adelaide and SA’s country towns and stations and a means of getting from A to B to now being a high-end tourism experience in itself and one of the world’s great train journeys. He said the service would continue to evolve and grow as it headed towards a century of journeys across the outback.
