Nothing in Australia Tried to Kill Me Except For…

Everything you hear about Australia seems to include the statement, “and everything there can kill you.” A reference to the number of venomous creatures and predators that inhabit the country. If you don’t believe me, read this. When anticipating our trip, I fully expected to have daily encounters with said creatures and spend much of my time fending off giant spiders and slithering snakes. Alas, that never happened and in five weeks I saw just one tiny, innocuous-looking spider. I killed it just in case!

The morning we boarded.

What I didn’t expect was to survive a train collision. That sounds dramatic, right? We had the opportunity to go on The Ghan. A train that goes down the middle of Australia from Darwin to Adalaide. In the moment the crash wasn’t bad. I was sitting in our room and felt a hard bump. Then another. The train screeched to a halt and the power went out.

I went out in the hall and chatted with neighbors as staff beginning running through the halls and outside.

We heard we’d been hit—WHAT?—by a road train which is what they call big semis that carry three to five trailers behind them. The one that hit us had three trailers filled with cows – the cows survived. (Although, I suspect that since they were being transported their life expectancy wasn’t good.)

Courtesy ABC

We were in the middle of nowhere about forty miles from the nearest town, Alice Springs. Somehow no one was seriously injured. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital to be treated for shock. You can read the news story here.

The crew rapidly put a plan together. The chefs who weren’t expecting to have to feed 200 people, threw together a late lunch. Buses came to pick us up and take us to Alice Springs. If not for the crash, we would have spent the day there. We couldn’t do the planned tours because it was mid-afternoon. But they took us to a beautiful, scared site to the indigenous people called Simpsons Gap.

We were bussed back to the train station to see the train sitting there and everyone cheered. We also got a closer look at the damage. It doesn’t look too bad, right? I was two cars behind the one hit. On the train we were told we’d be taken to the planned dinner under the stars and after we’d leave for our next stop of Coober Peaty.

The dinner under the stars was at a sand quarry. A beautiful place and a fantastic night filled with delicious food, stunning views, the funniest and most informative talk about the stars, a wonderful band, and dancing. It was a highlight of the trip. The photos below: the staff loaned Christine and I their hats for the photo, our new friends from New Zealand and Seattle, the backdrop for our dinner, and the last one is when they turned all the lights off but the moon was illuminating the table. I’ll spare you the dancing photos.

Back at the train, people drifted back to the lounges – four cars per lounge. We’d already made new friends, and I think the experience made us closer. Talk turned to the crash. The what ifs. What if it had happened five seconds earlier and we’d plowed into one of the massive cow trailers? What if it had happened five seconds later and the truck had plowed into a passenger car instead of the locomotive taking the brunt of the hit? Either scenario meant a probable derailment and a good chance that I wouldn’t be writing this.

The train didn’t end up taking off that night because the rail people decided the cars had to be inspected. And since Australia is such a big country an inspector had to fly in the next morning. Even though the locomotive didn’t look too bad, it was deemed too damaged to use. Fortunately the other locomotive was fine, so we continued on our journey with just one. Because of the delay we had an extra day on the train with our new friends and a great day at the opal mining town of Coober Peaty which included lunch in an opal mine.

The staff on The Ghan was amazing under extremely difficult circumstances. They were our heroes and had to work an extra, unplanned day but did so cheerfully and with grace. Below is a picture of me at the Majestic Breakaways near Coober Peaty, happy to be out enjoying the day.

There was much joking about me being a mystery author, the book Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, and how two hundred passengers could plan to kill someone in a train accident.

Readers: Have you been on an adventure that took an interesting turn or had a day that made you think what a difference five seconds could make?