The Ghan train jour­neys from Dar­win via Alice to Adelaide which is an impress­ive way to travel through the unend­ing sands of cent­ral Aus­tralia. For us the jour­ney began in great Aus­sie style with all the lug­gage being trans­por­ted incre­ment­ally from check-in to the train in the boot of an employee’s car. The reason spread like wild fire down the cus­tomer queue, appar­ently “the lug­gage truck was stolen”! Stand­ing around with the mid­day sun beat­ing relent­lessly down on us we mas­saged in sun-cream as the Aus­sies from Adelaide mocked the laid-back atti­tude here in Alice.

Our car­riage awaits for the 19 hour jour­ney from Alice Springs to Adelaide

Immacu­lately dressed attend­ants stood at the doors of each car­riage, or so I thought until we reached our attend­ant and real­ised the pre­vi­ous car­riages were for premier ser­vice. Still our red ser­vice attend­ant was very friendly and help­ful. Our seats had plenty of leg room which helps J relax and there was a lounge,  din­ing car­riage and bar for the red ser­vice pas­sen­gers to use.

Inform­at­ive announce­ments were made about local land­marks we passed along the way. Land­marks includ­ing the ‘Finke River’, a statue of the ‘Iron Man’ and the all import­ant boarder cross­ing. With my nose against the win­dow I stared into the ever decreas­ing light to see the boarder cross­ing between the North­ern Ter­rit­ory and South­ern Australia.

The first human set­tle­ment and the first water we saw since leav­ing Alice was at Port Augusta. Known as ‘The Gate­way of Aus­tralia’ due to the fact that all trans­port from East to West and from North to South goes through here. Head­ing South the land­scape makes a dra­matic change into lush green fields sur­roun­ded by tree-lined hedgerows, crowned with wind farms and scattered with vine­yards and live­stock. It was remin­is­cent of my child­hood home in the rolling hills of Somerset!

After break­fast we resided in the lounge as I took pho­tos of the new green land­scape. Here we met an eld­erly couple who took an interest in our jour­ney around the world and our cre­at­ive endeavors. Peter wrote agri­cul­tural art­icles for ABC radio. Shortly after we were sud­denly joined by a chatty man who was rather per­turbed to have earlier been mis­taken for ‘Doc­tor Death’! This was Franco. Franco had been vis­it­ing the Abori­ginal com­munit­ies North of Alice and trav­el­ing through the out­back in an old Toyota Corolla! This appeared to us as a crazy thing to do, and it was. Franco had been bogged in red sand for 18 hours using med­it­a­tion and ration­ing to sur­vive before being res­cued by a passerby! Over the com­ing hours we dis­cussed polit­ics, hous­ing and the stock mar­ket with all those in the carriage.

Inno­cently inquir­ing about the area where Franco lived, he invited us to stay, in exchange for some help in the garden and some odd jobs around the house. True to his word Franco col­lec­ted us the fol­low­ing morn­ing from another Annie’s Place (in Adelaide) and took us to his home in Hyde Park (an afflu­ent part of town). We were impressed by his open­ness and trust as he gave us a key to his home and left us there for the dur­a­tion of the after­noon whilst he ran errands. We made ourselves at home and in return tidied and cleaned in his absence.

That after­noon we vis­ited to Adelaide Cent­ral Mar­ket, a tour­ist high­light in the LP (Lonely Planet). Franco was obsessed with the price of everything here. Though we later dis­covered he lec­tures in Account­ancy at the Uni­ver­sity which explained his strange beha­viour. There was an amaz­ing array of goods and a buzz in the air from all the sellers shout­ing their wares. Everything was for sale includ­ing gar­lic sticks, kangaroo steaks, cro­codile fil­lets and Blood-Russian toma­toes. ‘Zuma’ is THE café to go to around here. You’re right on the door­step of the food court in Chin­atown, where J bought a book! That even­ing Franco shared with us a simple sup­per and his deli­cious homemade stru­del, which he nick­named ‘Frudel’. By 9pm I was rather con­cerned about our sleep­ing arrange­ment as Franco had not yet found any bed­ding for us. Rely­ing on the kind nature of his neigh­bours we were bestowed all the bed-linen and blankets (Manchester) we desired. Our night on the sofa-bed was most comfortable.

Wed­nes­day saw us help­ing in the garden which made me very happy. I weed­ing an extremely over­grown veget­able and herb garden as James mowed a jungle of a lawn to dis­cover an unseen path under­neath! That even­ing we vis­ited his par­ents for sup­per, though Franco cooked for us (then cleaned out the chicken coop) whilst we tried to con­verse with his Italian speak­ing par­ents whilst they were watch­ing TV, strange! Thursday was tree plant­ing day, this time under the guid­ance of Franco’s green-fingered friend.  Sadly the wild rocket came a crop­per dur­ing the weed­ing, oops! Dur­ing mov­ing some rocks James uncovered a Red­back spider to his hor­ror. We had all been garden­ing without gloves and this dis­cov­ery made us all much more cautious.

As prom­ised that after­noon Franco gave us a private view­ing of his Abori­ginal Art col­lec­tion at Father Christopher’s house. The art­works were breath­tak­ing and well worth see­ing. He cer­tainly has an eye for art and James and I were happy to listen to the story about each art­work. Tea with the vicar was as you would expect, lots of tea and lots of deli­cious cake.

In town we took a tour along North Ter­race, home of the Par­lia­ment build­ings and the art gal­ler­ies of South Aus­tralia, until the heav­ens opened.

Adelaide itself is an inter­est­ing city built by Col­onel Wil­liam Light who con­tro­ver­sially wrote:

“The reason that led me to fix Adelaide where it is I do not expect to be gen­er­ally under­stood or calmly judges of at present. My enemies, how­ever, by dis­put­ing their valid­ity in every par­tic­u­lar, have done me the good ser­vice of fix­ing the whole of the respons­ib­il­ity upon me. I am per­fectly will­ing to bear it; and I leave it to pos­ter­ity, and not them, to decide whether I am entitled to praise or to blame.”

The centre of this city is based on a grid format of wide street, civic squares and a par­tic­u­larly unique and lovely wide green belt sur­round­ing it that makes up a third of the city area. We liked Adelaide as it is com­pact enough to walk around in one day, but scratch beneath the sur­face and you will find gems of cre­ativ­ity and per­son­al­ity that are hard to find else­where in Oz. The Abori­ginal art exhib­i­tions, recom­men­ded to us by Franco, were great examples of the cul­ture and her­it­age here and well worth the trip.

Stay­ing with Franco was a won­der­ful and enlight­en­ing exper­i­ence. He is a fas­cin­at­ing and pas­sion­ate man who has a great under­stand­ing of the true val­ues of life. As a young­ster Franco made a decent liv­ing as an account­ant before decid­ing that life is much more than money and the 9–5. So he took to the road for many years of trav­el­ing. He has marched across Europe for peace (dressed as Charlie Chap­lin) and ulti­mately met the Pope on this quest. He has a good and com­pas­sion­ate nature with a love of people and both an artistic eye and math­em­at­ical brain. We wish him well in life and in all he tries to achieve. He is a great man to know.

By Fri­day it was time for us to make tracks out of Adelaide and move on to Kangaroo Island for some WWOOFing.

Note.  Please note that the art­works shown in this blog are the prop­erty of Franco.  If you are inter­ested in them in any way please con­tact us via email — do not link them or post them else­where.  Thank you.

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