INSIDE TRACK
In the dead of night, in the middle of the desert, The Ghan slows from 115 km/h to a surprisingly gentle stop, for a 1,760-tonne train. There is a wheezing exhale of the engine and then descendant silence; pin-drop quiet that is hard to find anywhere in the world. We are somewhere between the Tanami and Simpson Deserts where no headlights or highway penetrate and, for now, the halt is unexplained. Where savannah gives way to arid mulga-studded plains, the nearly kilometre-long train is a mere dot along the 2,973-kilometre tracks that cleaves the continent in half from Darwin to Adelaide.
The legendary Australian train is making a special
