Sam's Diary in Oz

I caught the legendary Ghan from Darwin on an overnight journey to Alice Springs with a 4 hour stop at Katherine.

Katherine is a strange place. It's near enough one main street with speakers on the lampposts which play country music during the day? A big aborigine area, most of which hung out at the bottle shop, in pubs or sat on the shaded bits of grass drinking grog. The only white people I saw in the town were the people working in the pubs and shops.

The Ghan itself was empty so everyone grabbed 2 seats for themselves. I really enjoyed the journey, we went through some great landscapes and arrived in Alice Springs early on Tuesday morning.

I expected it to be more desert like, but it's pretty green. Aparently they had good rainfall over the past 2 weeks. The flies are out in force here although I have resisted the temptation of using my fly net, although quite a few people do wear them.

I had a good look around the town. It's small and modern with food and chain stores.

I visited The Flying Doctor Service - that was cool. It's operating live as you walk round. Dave sits at a desk and takes calls from Doctors (they docs are the only people with authority to order a plane off the ground) and contacts the medics and pilots with details. While we were there he was dealing with 2 emergencies. One, a small child and the other a baby, each about 60-90 minutes by plane in different directions from Alice Springs. Dave sent one plane out to collect the child first so that the baby only had one take off/landing to deal with. It's only a small office and you can read the details on the whiteboard and see the plane routes/destinations on the map.

There's 14 Flying Doctors Stations operating in Oz so everyone is within a 3 hour flight from help. 90% of the people they help are aboriginal. What they do is pretty amazing.

Later in the afternoon I sat around the pool at the hostel, had a bit to eat and caught an early night.

The Ghan

High Street, Alice Springs

Flying Doctor Service main office