The Ghan and the Kangaroo

Blog 10A   The Ghan and the Kangaroo

The Ghan Journey

The Ghan is considered one of the great train journeys in the world.  It runs from Adelaide in the south of Australia to Darwin in the north, traveling through some of the most hostile and desolate region of Australia – the Outback.  The northbound journey takes 3 days, with stops in Alice Springs in the Outback and Katherine in the Northern Territory.

It was originally called the Afghan Express for the cameleers who came from either Pakistan or Afghanistan 150 years ago and helped build the railroad through the Red Center of the Outback.  Today if you are lucky you can still see some of the wild camels that are descendants from this group of pioneers.  The first Ghan train to leave Adelaide departed on 4 August 1929, arriving in what is now known as Alice Springs on 6 August 1919.

It had to contend with a myriad of problems back then.  Not only was the heat extreme, but there were many instances of flash flooding that washed out the tracks.  And if that were not enough, the tracks were made of wood and were often damaged by termites and fires.  Legend has it that one of the Ghan trips was stranded in a remote part of the outback for two weeks and the engineer had to shoot wild goats to feed the passengers.  In 1980, the old tracks were abandoned, and a new set of tracks, built with termite-resistance concrete sleepers (ties), was built further west of the original tracks to mitigate the flash flooding.

The original Ghan only went as far as Alice Springs.  During the late 1900’s and early 2000’s the tracks from Alice Springs to Darwin were built and on 1 February 2004 the first transcontinental journey of the Ghan left Adelaide for Darwin.  Today the trip covers 1851 miles from the serene, pastoral grasslands of the south Australian plains, through the remote McDonnell Mountains and red soil of the Outback, to the tropical vegetation and dramatic gorges of the Northern Territory.

One of the things I was most excited about seeing were the Kangaroos in the wild, and our train trip through the outback will hopefully accomplish this.  Australia is home to 70% of the world’s 331 marsupial species, so it is no wonder that the kangaroo has become this country’s unofficial mascot.  Other marsupials include the koala, quokka, and Tasmanian Devil.  Marsupials (Latin for the word pouch) first appeared in the Cretaceous period, roughly 90 million years ago.  During that time, they lived in what is now South America (South America and Australia were connected to Antarctica as part of the ancient mega continent known as Gondwana).  It is believed that before geological forces pulled these lands apart, these marsupials crossed over Antarctica’s then hospitable land and drifted or swam through the narrow sea as Australia drifted away from Antarctica.

These animals differ from placental mammals in how their young are born and develop.  Marsupials have a much shorter gestation period (just 4-5 days for kangaroos) and when born they are nearly helpless.  These babies must then spend months nursing and developing in their mother’s pouch.

The largest marsupial is of course the kangaroo.  They can grow up to 7 feet tall and weigh as much as 200 pounds.  With their well-muscled hind legs, they can leap at speeds up to 43 mph. 

Unfortunately, many of these marsupials are highly endangered.  The koala, a much smaller marsupial, was nearly hunted to extinction by early European settlers and now faces the loss (due to farming and urban development) of the eucalyptus tree that it relies on for food.  The Tasmanian Devil is now nearly extinct due to a contagious facial cancer that causes large tumors around the head and mouth, interfering with its ability to eat and thus starving to death.  There is no cure, so scientists hope that by quarantining healthy Tasmanian Devils and a captive breeding program will help save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction.   Today Tasmanian Devils are found in the wild only in Tasmania.  Perhaps, if we are super lucky, we will see one when we visit Tasmania.