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The Railway Dream

Joyce Allen's account of the development of services in the outback of Australia.

As early as 1870 South Australia and the Northern Territory were thinking of a railway link spanning Australia from Adelaide to Darwin. The 1870s were boom years in South Australia.

The opening up of the northern Flinders Ranges for mining, cattle breeding and cereal growing necessitated the extension of the narrow gauge line northwards from Port Augusta, first to Quorn in 1879 and to Hawker in 1880. More extensions followed rapidly, to Farina and Marree in 1882.

The economic boom of the 1870s must have burst then, because further extensions to Oodnadatta were built by a 'State Government Employment Relief Scheme' from 1888 to 1891.

For the next 40 years Oodnadatta was the rail head of the northern railway and the pick up point for Afghan camel drivers who served the interior stations.

Finally, in 1929 the railway reached Alice Springs and the train was dubbed the 'Ghan' as a tribute to the long and faithful services of the cameleers.

From searing heat in the summer to sudden torrential downpours that brought flooded creeks washing away sections of the line and bridges, the train crews had to cope with the extremes of the harsh inland climate. It has been said that a trip on the Old Ghan could last from three days to three months. "You pays your money but we threw away the timetable long ago."

In the Northern Territory, the discovery of gold in the Pine Creek area led to the construction of a light railway from Darwin to Pine Creek by the South Australian Government. This was officially opened on the 1st of October 1889.

In Chapter two of her book, "We of the Never-Never", Mrs Aeneas Gunn paints a wonderful word picture of the journey by train from Darwin to Pine Creek early in 1902.

This "delightful train - just a simple hearted weather beaten, old bushwhacker" as Mrs Gunn described it, was never to be an economic proposition. In other words it never showed a profit.

The line was extended to Katherine in 1917 and to Birdum, with a spur line to Larrimah in 1929.

In 1911, the administration of the Northern Territory was transferred from the South Australian Government to the Federal Government. Part of the deal was that the North-South railway 'would be completed' but there was no mention of when or what route it would follow. Today we are still waiting for that promise to be kept.

In the 1940s the 'Old Bushwhacker' and the 'Ghan' came into their own, though at the time few civilians knew about it.

Another operation known to only a few Australians was 'The Secret Battle 1942-1944, The Convoy Battle off the east coast of Australia'.

Robert Wallace's expose of this was first published in 1995.

A quotation from Wallace reads:

"The outcome of the war hinged not only on the clash of the mighty battle fleets spread across the Pacific, but also on the supply line battles between the 'little ships' (corvettes) and their invisible enemies, the cruisers and the submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy."

What has this to do with a somewhat decrepit and unfinished transcontinental railway line, you may well ask?

Another secret battle was being fought over Darwin at the time.

To convey troops, supplies and equipment to the Northern Territory, a secret operation, 'Up the Track', was mounted.

Up to 30 trains a day travelled north from Port Augusta to Alice Springs where men, supplies and equipment were transferred to trucks to be driven to Larrimah. Birdum rightly claimed to be the southern terminus of the Northern Territory railway, but Larrimah on the spur line was the staging camp for the Armed Forces.

This explains the slogan emblazed on vehicles in the convoys of trucks across Central Australia - 'Larrimah or Bust'.

At the time of the bombing of Darwin, the only one we Southerners ever heard about, the Stuart Highway from Alice Springs, was nothing more than a dirt track.

Between the end of September and the end of December 1940, a sealed road was built to replace the old track. It was called 'The Ninety Day Wonder', and it broke up from the extreme stress and had to be rebuilt.

Those of us who had to travel by rail in those years knew there was something going on up North, but had little clue as to what it was. All war news was strictly censored.

It wasn't until 1976 that the Northern Territory railway line was finally closed. Then in 1980, the old Ghan line between Port Augusta and Alice Springs was replaced by a new standard gauge track from Tarcoola.

In the 1990s at the prospect of the transcontinental North-South line being built, Port Darwin was redeveloped to the tune of $250,000,000.

There is also a story that 'in Tennant Creek, the townspeople got into the swing of things with their Grand Opening of the Railway Station. It didn't bother them that there are no railway lines as yet'.

And so the 'Railway Dream' still lingers on.