Sydney – Darwin Alt Route

It occured to me there is a couple of other ways to get to the exit port of Darwin.
Countrylink timetables give you some tributaries to follow.
From Sydney head…

South - to Melbourne,

• then take The Overland to Adelaide.
• Not that creative

North to Brisbane on one of the XPT’s, but be warned these dont have the best reputations amongst Australian train travellers, they look flash in the pictures but drunken parties aren’t uncommon.

• You can either go directly to Roma Street Station or change to a bus on the Casino XPT or Grafton XPT service. daily ~15hrs (arr 22:31 bus or 0630 xpt)

or to really get funky, well as funky as public tranport goes
North West to Lightning ridge,

dep Sydney 0710 on the daily XPT.
join you bus connection at Dubbo 1430
and finally arrive in Lightning Ridge at 2203

Dep Lightning Rydge with Kynoch Coaches at 0700 –T–F-
arrive in Toowoomba at 2200

Brisbane is ont 1h30m from here by bus

Its probably the only chance you will get to see some rural Australia.

From Brisbane you do what you did in Sydney and catch a multitude of services to an outer point, in this case I would choose Nambour (1h30m) or Cooroy/Noosa (2h), and catch the night time Tilt.

• From Roma Street its on to the Sunlander
  to Townsville.
  S-T-T– 0900|0900 (then 2 nights stay)
• or the much newer Cairns Tilt Train. -M-W-F- 1825|1205 (direct connection)
  
• Then take the Inlander to Mt Isa 1240|0935 +1 S—T–
  
• Then take a greyhound bus to Darwin via Tennant Creek
• Mt Isa 1930 | Tennant Creek 0250 || 0325 | Darwin 1730
  

The lander trains are interesting ones. Some of the ‘lander cars are over 50 years old, the original design for the car allows them to be self sufficient for up to a week if they are cut off by flood waters. For this reason they have separate powercars and they used to have multiple dining cars. They also have Australia’s only 3 berth sleepers.

Another alternative, you could also go on to Cairns then board the Sea Swift to Thursday Island (dep Fri arr Wed)
then somehow make you way north to Iryan Jaya. From there a Pelni ship can carry you to the island of Java (about 5-7 days transit). Now you would feel funky after that trip.

Leaving Australia

This is where it gets interesting and a little scary

Getting out of Australia, but still remaining on the ground might prove to be impossible.
There are rumors that the Barge from Darwin to Timor still accepts passenger traffic, other than this the only other route is by ‘unofficial’ means from Saibai Islands to PNG or by one of the expensive freighters out of Cairns, Darwin or even Perth.

As of June 11 2008:

Perkins operate the MV Arafura Endeavour and CEC Venture, out of Darwin, they take 4×4’s over for about $110 and hopefully passengers as well

FREQ: ~1 a week

TIME: Around 12 Hours (700km)

Darwin

Arriving

You need to get a cab unless they have a service bus. The station is around 16km out of town in the Industrial Area.

Darwin

Dont know too much about it.

Quiet little city.

It does have a Bus service, but no more than any other regional center, they are shiny and new, and more importantly Air Conditioned.

The Ghan

The Ghan. Not much too it really.

Leave Adelaide 1220 S--W---
Arrive Darwin  1800 --T--F-

Be warned thats 2 and a half days.

Although it does run up to 1km in length depending on the season. Also Dec/Jan is not the time to go, a little thing called the Wet Season means most things dont run.

It does have an amazing history, but without a 4WD your really cant explore it. WWII it was a major supply line, 3000km partly by train, partly by 6 wheeled trucks, often on tracks that would be built, washed away and rebuilt in a night.
You can read a book on the way:

The Ghan: The story of the Alice Springs Railway by Basil Fuller

Try the National Railway Museum in Port Adelaide if you get a chance

Or the Adelaide Books in the mall

Adelaide

View Larger Map

The Indian Pacific gives you plenty of relaxation time, you cruise out of outer sydney, have dinner on the train and awake the next morning in Broken Hill 0820. From there its another 10 hours looking out the window until you arrive in Adelaide at 1840.

A little inconvenient you miss the Ghan by 6 hours. You have to stay 2 nights in Adelaide. There are some unique sites to see and some even more unique public transport.

• The Adelaide O-Bahn, world longest guided busway.
• The only diesel suburban rail network left in Australia
  • See if you can get one of the jumbo’s, they usually run during peak hours only and make an interesting ride. Might be one of the last diesel-hydraulic transmission railcars left too.
  • All the trains are broad gauge, plenty of shoulder room.
  • Sitting up the front of the 3000 class DMU will give you a driver side view of the road.
  • The trip up to Belair and back is another picturesque ride.
• The Glenelg tram is interesting, don’t know how often the old H class trams run, but catch one, their nearly 80 years old.

Start…

View Larger Map
Sydney Terminal, as good a place as any to start to plan to go half way around the globe by public transport.

From here to get to the next bit you need to get to Darwin. Now the straight forward way would be to Catch the Indian Pacific to Adelaide and then The Ghan to Darwin, but why missout on all that variety.

You can travel a long way by public transport in NSW but you do need to draw a line. Yes you could get to Broken Hill by public transport I guess, but you can only endure so much ‘Travel’. You have alot of factors to consider in setting an outer limit of endurance and risk with any travel plans. Why not start out with something different, book your bags in at Central and head west on Sydney’s public Transport.

The weakest link in the plan is the IP, for that you need to work backwards from your critical last connection time. You do eventually need to catch up with the IP. Travel plans should consider these last minute stops:

Mon,Tue           Arr   Dep
Sydney    00:00 14:55 14:55
Lithgow   03:19 18:09 18:09
Bathurst  04:41 19:44 19:44
Blayney   05:45 20:51 20:51
Orange    06:14 21:25 21:25
Parkes    09:13 23:23 23:23

The sydney metropolitan bus network extends to penrith in the west, from there you can get Cityrail trains as far as Lithgow and CountryLink Bus/Rail travel beyond here. The countrylink Western Timetable doesnt integrate the Indian Pacific you you need to do some work.

You can get a morning Explorer service and spend the day at Parkes

• Sydney 0620 | Parkes 12:55 || 23:23 (no thanks)

Orange presents a problem, Orange and Orange East Fork are not the same station, east fork is about 2km from the middle of town. You do get to spend 4 hours there but it will be dark.

• Lithgow 15:20 | Orange 17:00 || 21:25 (4h25)

A number of buses can get you to Bathurst but Blaney only allows a 4 min window to catch the IP. Bathurst is probably as far as you want to go before bunking down on the IP for the night

• Lithgow 15:20 | Bathurst 16:15 || 19:44 (3h15)

Given the Blue Mountains end at Lithgow you may want to just fall back to boarding here

• Lithgow 18:09

Back from here you can enjoy the Blue Mountains via Cityrail’s Blue Mountain Line, might be able to go in and out of scheduled services with the Blue Mountain Bus Company although the train will give a better view. A stop at Katoomba or the Zig Zag is a good call.

Metropolitain Sydney gives you plenty of Public Transport marvels, you could spends days here and never catch the same service twice.

The ferry is only around 1km from the station across the middle of town.

Dep Parramatta station 12:27/14:54 | arr Lithgow 14:25/17:12 || 18:09 join the IP

Get the Ferry to Paramatta from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour

• Dep Circular Quay 0900/1000/1100/1230 +60 mins later into Parramatta
• or get lost on the myriad of buses running from Sydney via whoopwhoop to Parramatta, allow 2 hours

0800 Start out leave your bags for the IP at Central and take the Train to Circular Quay

• This is as close as Australia gets to a Metro, the City Circle Line
  

• or Tram to Darling Harbour

• • Sydney lost its trams in the 50’s; the Metro Light Rail isnt really a metro and by light rail standards doesn’t use light rail, its the full 50kg/m
• With a bit of creativity you can also jump on the Monorail

After reading this and the next post I realised that there is another way to get to Darwin, thats a little more interesting…
See later entry Sydney – Darwin Alt Route

Planning this out is easier if you use tools like Gantt charts or timespace graphs. Have got my style for this down yet. Look for the bolds, there the critical bits.