I can’t say I’ve really visited Tennant Creek. I only know from hearsay that it’s not the sort of place you take your mother for a Mothers’ Day treat. Nevertheless, our train did stop there for a considerable time in the ‘small hours’, while we slept soundly in our sleeper berths.

The reason was twofold; it ensured that passengers saw as much of the Australian landscape by daylight as possible, and that the train arrived in Alice Springs at a fairly civilised hour.

You see, you don’t take an Australian long-distance train just to get there; it’s much quicker and cheaper to fly. I once described it as a ‘coach trip on rails’ … which is a rather unfair description, because no coach I know has such comfortable accommodation, or such good food...

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