To start our day, the train manager, a bespectacled man right out of central casting – stopwatch, handlebar mustache and all – introduced me to a proper, 84-year-old, Australian woman named Victoria. White of hair, she wore a button-down sweater and a long tweed skirt. While sipping tea on a couch near the window in the lounge car, spoke slowly of her experiences with Americans.
"I remember the American soldiers who came over during the Second World War. I remember that they were so smartly dressed and sharp looking. They tended to make our Australian boys look a scruffy," she recalled. "It was on a train, in fact, that a saw a young American soldier offered a drink. But he refused, that boy. He said that before he left home his mother made him promise that he would not take up drinking or smoking while at war. He said he wanted to honor his promise to his mother. I was impressed by that American and I’ve wondered for all of my life whatever happened to him."
Evening dinners aboard the Indian Pacific are even more festive – with "Waltzing Matilda" sing-alongs and all of the intrigue that comes after dark. It’s not required, but dressing for dinner in a jacket and tie made me feel like Bond…James Bond.
Going all the way from Perth to Sydney, at an average locomotive speed of 85 kilometers an hour, is a three-night trip. Thanks to Air New Zealand’s handy flight from Los Angeles via Auckland, you may also board in Adelaide, Australia’s "wine country," which would give you, (for $500, meals included) 24 hours aboard this charming timepiece after visiting famous wineries of the Barossa Valley such as Jacob’s Creek and Penfold’s for tastings and vineyard tours. There is a two-hour stop along the way in the arid, Outback mining town of Broken Hill, which you may stretch your legs and explore if you wish. (So remote is Broken Hill that scenes for the films "Mad Max" and "Mission Impossible II" were shot here, and medical service is provided via a "fly-in doctor.")
Pulling into Sydney Central Station in midmorning was bittersweet. Like a child, I wanted more of the train. But then, wide-eyed, I spotted the stark white trumpeting peaks of the world famous Sydney Opera House and the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge…which I immediately set out to climb…but let’s leave that story for another time, as this journal is pulling into the station.