The Ghan

We had a fantastic time on the Ghan - the train which took us from Adelaide to Darwin.
The crew were brilliant & a lot of fun. They welcomed us onto the train and then showed us to our cabins. Susan was looking after our carriage for the trip (she came from Solihull originally). The cabins had a sofa & were en suite. Susan turned the sofa into bunk beds when we went for dinner.
The food on the train was fantastic. The best bit was that Annabelle loved virtually all the meals that were presented. They had some excellent wines too.
We got on the train 11am Sunday & arrived in Darwin 5pm Tuesday.
On Monday we stopped Alice Springs where we could choose to do a variety of things. Gary & the girls decided that they wanted to go on a helicopter flight - so off we went. It was great fun seeing Alice Springs from the air.
On Tuesday morning we stopped in Katharine. This time we decided to go canoing down the river. The first trauma was when Lucy discovered that there were crocs in the river. They're only freshies (freshwater crocs) so they are quite small & tend to hide away from humans. After a lot of coaxing we got her into a canoe with Gary. Annabelle & I climbed into the other canoe.
We were sent upstream, the ranger said the going would be easy as they hadn't had too much rain. Off we paddled.....
The first little mishap happened when Annabelle passed her hat & sunnies to Gary (not sure why). Both fell in the river. The hat was rescued but the sunnies sank without a trace - one unhappy Annabelle!
A bit more coaxing and we managed to get paddling again. We eventually reached a point where the current was quite strong so decided to turn back and float downstream. Suddenly Annabelle became hysterical - she'd just noticed that there were spiders in the canoe (think they might have been there all along). Gary brought his canoe alongside to try & help sort out the spiders. Annabelle meanwhile was dancing about in the front of the canoe - I thought we were done for. Something then landed on my hat & crawled onto my sunglasses - I pulled it off my face & threw it into the river. It was a spider the size of your hand!!! At that point I decided that it might be a good idea to come out from under the trees. We started to paddle downstream. Gary & Lucy were far ahead. We suddenly realised that they had capsized and paddled like fury to catch their canoe. We then realised that Lucy was clinging to a branch to stop herself from being washed downstream so we turned our canoe round to rescue Lucy. Gary lifted her into our canoe (I thought we were going to capsize too) and we took her back to the jetty where she went to get the ranger to help us. Annie & I then set off to collect the canoe, hat and barrel that were all floating downstream (we're still trying to work out how many points each item is worth). Another English girl on the trip took her canoe back upstream & helped Gary retrieve the paddles. At the end we were all very wet but agreed that the canoing was more fun than the helicopter ride.
Anyway we got back on the train for the last hop to Darwin where it was raining!!!
Take care & see you soon

Love Geraldine xx