Australian Trains 2025: 4 - Perth to Sydney

Our next stop was Kalgoorlie. We are now crossing the Nullabor Plain, which generally has only low vegetation. We will travel 1,200 Km to cross it. We were surprised the animal life that the plain supports, such as emus, kangaroos, dingoes and camels. A few camels were brought to Australia during the gold rush, then later freed. There are now about 100,000 of them. We didn't see any, though. We did pass through the Rawtinna, a sheep station (ranch) with over 30,000 sheep on about 2,500,000 acres of land.

When we reached the border between South Australia and Western Australia we were 2,972 km from Sydney and 1,384 km from Perth. In the evening we were treated to a large bonfire and a lady who knew the heavens pointed out various stars, planets and star groups. She had a powerful laser light that allowed the individually stars to be pointed out exactly.

Next evening we stopped in the Barossa Valley, a premium wine producing area. We were bussed to the Seppeltsfield Winery where we were treated to a fabulous gourmet dinner accompanied by various incredible wines, and even a port that was over 100 years old. I was surprised at how mellow it was!

In the morning we were in Broken Hill which has more art galleries per person than anywhere else in Australia, and a lot of other cultural activities, Strange to find out in the desert.

We then headed into the Blue Mountains, which I had planned to see during other visits but never did. We had our first rain here, but could still see the beautiful hilly countryside and totally different vegetation. The trees were in brilliant autumn colours of red, yellow, brown and green.

We left the train at Mount Victoria for a bus tour of the area, and rode a quite amazing funicular up almost vertical slopes. The train then took us though forested countryside, gradually losing altitude to sea level at Sydney. Here we disembarked to be taken to the beautiful Shangrila hotel, where our 18th floor room provided great scenic views of the harbour, the harbour bridge and the famous opera house. There was an even better view at the bar and restaurant on the 36th floor.

We spent most of our time walking around the Rocks area of Sydney, the home of some of my favourite pubs, as well as superb restaurants. Marilynn and I agreed we had the best meal of our lives at the “Saki” Japanese restaurant. It was so amazing we went there a second night. It was Anzac day and The Rocks was crowded with people visiting and bars and restaurants.

This is being written in the COPA airlines lounge in Panama where we have a 4 hour wait between our flight from Santiago Chile, where we arrived from Australia the day before. We had to overnight in Santiago then fly to Panama this morning. Another hour and a half flight should see us at home, at about 10 PM.