Go West Young Man - Day 3 - 13 October 2014

I woke up early as breakfast was scheduled to start at 7.00am as we were to stop at Cook in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain just after 9.00am.  Unfortunately for me and several other passengers I had not heard the announcement to set our watches back one hour to "train time" so we all had an extra hour to wait.   Anyway I had a light breakfast  of toast and cereals before going back to the cabin to post Day 2's blog but I could not get an internet connection so you would have got it a day late.

Cook is in the middle of nowhere in South Australia.  It used to be a railway maintenance workers town with a hospital and a swimming pool and even its own jail!  Now it has a permanent population of four.  We stopped to fill up the trains fuel tanks for the long haul to Perth.  We all got out and walked up and down to look at the old town.  Some of  artistic graffiti advised us to "save our local hospital - get sick".  It was quite windy and cool so we were soon back on board to complete a journey across the Nullarbor which means "no trees " in the local dialect.

It was a ten hour stretch to Kalgoorlie are next stop and I passed the time reading a book from the train's little library.  It was "The Bush Bashers"  by Len Beadell.  He was the surveyor who laid  out the UK atomic test site at Maralinga in South Australia and also built many roads aross the outback in support of these tests.  I was lucky enough to meet Len in the 1980s as we both worked for the Department of Defence at the time.  Len wrote seven books about his exploits and in this one he got married and took his bride, a young English girl, and their 3 month old daughter on a six month campaign to build new road.    When completed it was called the "Connie Sue Highway " after their daughter.  I managed to read the complete book .

See:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Sue_Highway

As we neared Kalgoorlie trees came back. We had an early lunch (chicken and cheese plate)  and dinner (lamb cutlets and apple pie) before arriving at Kalgoorlie.  This meant that by  about 8.30pm  train time we were off on a tour of  the town but it was really only 7.00pm West Australian time.  We visited the mining museum and the huge open cut gold mine, The Super Pit.  It was very interesting but as it finished at 10.00pm WA time or 11.30pm train time and I had been awake since 4.00am train time I was exhausted.  I went straight to bed and was asleep before the train left K at 11.00pm WA time .

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