The Overlander, Adelaide - Melbourne

If you want to travel stress free take "The Overlander" from Adelaide to Melbourne and let "the train take the strain" for the eleven hour journey. It was a tonic.

In putting together the trip I had reasoned that we should at least try to see as much of the countryside of the countries we were visiting as was possible. So where reasonable we would take the train or drive if that was unavoidable. As the faithful reader will already know we started with the Premier Classe trip which had been a qualified success. I think both Marion and I would say The Overlander was pretty much a full success, well with a couple of caveats.

Actually, it did not meet expectations because the countryside was not what I thought it would be. I had reviewed the trip on my my small screened pc and the map seemed to indicate that the rail, road and coastline were pretty much all together for much of the journey. Wrong! The rail line at least runs quite a long way inland and shortly after leaving Adelaide you leave behind the coast completely and the vast majority of the trip is through open countryside, sometimes flat, sometimes rolling and when you get nearer to Melbourne sometimes hilly when you can see the Grampians in the distance. But this did not matter because the joy of the trip was that it is truly relaxing.

It starts by handing in your bags at the relatively new station in Adelaide. There is a welcoming waiting area with shops and restaurant and then you get on the train about a half hour before it leaves. You are shown to your assigned seat by the hostess and the hostess remains with you for the full trip. The first class carriage is truly spacious and you have acres of personal space. The train manager constantly keeps you informed of where you are and points out interesting things en route. We were really lucky in that our manager a great sense of Aussie humour and used it well in his announcements. Meals were well catered and you could take them in your seat or go to the restaurant car. We stayed put in our seats. I later discovered that the restaurant car had power points so extended use of the ubiquitous pc was possible. We caught up on some blogging, some photo organization, some sleep, but mostly we just relaxed.

During one of my blogging sessions I had a long discussion on all things pc, software and general computer with a fellow pc user who turned out to be an IBMer from upstate New York who was implementing an SAP system at Telstra, the Australian telecoms company. We managed this in spite of the frequent interruptions of an inebriated South Australian social worker who finally moved away to bother someone proclaiming "he could not understand what we were talking about". Turns out computereese has it uses!

It was a great trip and glory be the train rolled into Melbourne Southern Cross station right in time and stopped right in front of my cousin and her husband with whom we were staying for the next few days.