August 1, 2025 – Alice Springs to Darwin on the Ghan (Author: J)
While I slept pretty well on the Ghan, it was still a train. I woke up a few times during the night when we hit bumps or our carriage swayed. When I was jolted awake at 6:30 am, I decided to begin my day. I started with a shower in our en suite bathroom, a small room containing a sink, shower, and toilet. There was a curtain to cordon off the shower while using it, but nothing to keep the floor area outside the “shower” dry. Despite those limitations, it was a surprisingly decent shower with good water pressure and plenty of hot water.
P is past his early riser stage, so I left him sleeping in his bunk and went to the lounge car for coffee. The bar in the lounge has an espresso maker, so fancy coffee drinks are on offer along with regular coffee, tea, and soft and alcoholic drinks. I had a flat white, read my book (Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, a mystery by Benjamin Stevenson that is set on the Ghan), and enjoyed the views from the windows. Overnight, we had moved from the desert to a more tropical climate with landscape and vegetation changes to match. After a while, D joined me. He reported that he had no issues with the shared bathroom situation in the single cabin car and had slept well in his single bed.
Eventually, it was time to wake P up so that we could eat breakfast before the train arrived in Katherine. Like dinner, breakfast is multiple courses. We all had the juice of the day and the yogurt and fruit parfait. For mains, D and I chose the full breakfast (eggs, beans, and veg, hold the meats) and P had the ricotta hotcakes. The food and service were, again, excellent. The servers’ ability to navigate narrow spaces on a moving train without spilling hot coffee on anyone was super impressive to me.
After breakfast, we grabbed our day bag for the day’s activity. I think of the Ghan kind of like a land cruise. Between the embarkation and disembarkation points are various stops where guests do excursions. The full journey from Adelaide includes activities in Marla and Alice. Because we joined in Alice, our only stop was Katherine. There were four tour options in Katherine, all included: a short gorge cruise in Nitmiluk, a longer cruise that required enough mobility to change boats between gorges, a cave hike, and an outback experience at a cattle station. You select your tour options a few weeks before boarding the train. We made our selection using a ranked choice voting process where everyone in the family had 2 votes to award to their 1st choice and 1 vote to their 2nd choice. The winner was the longer gorge cruise, which was D’s first choice, and the 2nd choice for P and me.
The tour logistics were seamless. Coaches – clearly marked with the tour names — were waiting for us at the station when we arrived. There were also carts waiting to transport anyone with mobility issues from the train to the coaches. It’s about a 30-minute drive from the train station in Katherine to Nitmiluk. Once we arrived, there was a chance to use the restroom and then we boarded our boat. The Ghan provided buckets of fruit and water that guests could grab as they boarded.
Nitmiluk is a national park containing a series of stunning gorges that the Katherine River carved through sandstone cliffs. According to the Dreamtime stories of traditional owners of the land, the Jawoyn people, the gorges were carved by the rainbow serpent who still sleeps in the deepest part of the gorge. To really get a sense of the snake-like shape of the gorges, you need to fly above them. But, from the water, there were some twists and turns that created spectacular views of the cliffs. In addition to the landscape, we saw wildlife including birds and crocodiles.
After cruising through the first gorge, guests need to disembark the boat and walk to the next gorge. It’s not a long walk, but it does require decent mobility. For that reason, there was a covered sitting area at the dock where guests could wait while the rest of their group did the cruise of the 2nd gorge. (The shorter cruise option doesn’t require any transfers). The walk between the gorges takes you past a 40,000-year-old rock painting high on the cliff face.
After the cruise, we boarded the coaches. The driver started the engine, puttered forward a few feet, and dropped us at our lunch destination. I assume this was an accessibility thing, but it was silly not to offer the option to walk to lunch given the distance. It took longer to buckle our seatbelts than it did to drive to lunch.
We ate in the Nitmiluk Visitor Centre. Lunch was a huge platter of meats, including crocodile and kangaroo, served family style. Our table included my family (2 vegetarians and a pescatarian), a group of Australian women who had moral qualms about eating native wildlife, and a Canadian couple. That meant that it was on the 2 Canadians to eat 10 servings of kangaroo, crocodile, and emu. The vegetarian option for this meal was a plate with all of the veggie sides and sauces from the meat platter. For P, they prepared a grilled cheese sandwich. There was a selection of Australian sodas, wines and beers to round things out. After the main meal was cleared away, an assortment of desserts was also served family style. There were no conscientious objectors to dessert.
After lunch, there was a little time to enjoy the views from the visitor centre and look in the small museum. Then, it was back on the coaches to return to the Ghan. Back on the train, we packed up and relaxed in our room a bit before returning to the lounge for the rest of the journey. The Ghan does not arrive in Darwin until around 8 pm, so they offer what they describe as a light dinner before you disembark. Light means 2 courses instead of 3. Unlike the previous night’s meal, there were not assigned times for this dinner. You just queued up when you were ready to eat. The food was excellent, as we had come to expect on the Ghan, and there were lovely views of the tropical landscape as we approached Darwin.
After dinner, we returned to the lounge until they announced last call for the bar. At that point, we figured they were getting ready to kick us off the train, so we went back to our cabins to prepare. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a thorough enough job searching the various hidey-holes win our room, and I wound up leaving a pair of dress shoes behind. Fortunately, Darwin is a laid-back city and no one complained that I wore flip-flops to dinner for the rest of the trip.
The station in Darwin is a bit outside of town, so coaches were waiting to take us to our accommodations. We boarded the coach that was headed to the Vibe, and, twenty minutes later, we were checking in. The first thing that I noticed at reception was a sign stating that the hotel did not offer housekeeping services. This was an unpleasant surprise given the price point for the hotel. The first thing that I noticed when we checked into our room was a general lack of cleanliness. Hairs in the tub, yellow stains on the bathroom wall, etc. I tried to keep my disappointment to myself so that I didn’t sour P and D’s experience, but I did document everything so that I could write a review warning off other travelers. Then it was off to bed because we had a full-day tour booked for the following morning.
Travel Monkeys 