I decided to travel by train for this leg. I have not travelled in a sleeper car type train before so was excited for the experience. It seems most people are much older that go on this type of a gold tour - which includes meals, sleeper and of course, drinks (wine for me!) It is expensive and there is not much to do.

We are travelling across the Nullabor, part of the Western Australian desert. It is big, no water, not much life, hot, dry and pretty much scrubby. But inside the train, we are comfortable, very well fed and watered and there are interesting folks aboard. I had time to catch up on blogs and sorting pictures, drank some really good wine. There is not much physical activity which makes me antsy so the stops in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining town and Cook - not sure what, was welcomed and turned out to be interesting. I believe if you want to see a country, you have to go off track. Meet the locals. Australia was truly a wild, harsh place originally populated by natives for up to (no one knows) 70,000 years before the Dutch found it and the English claimed it as there own. They went looking for this place because America was independant and they could not send their criminals there anymore. So Australia was born from wars with natives, hard criminals, people looking for land and a new life. Most of the country has little water, is hot, dry and unforgiving however populated by a very stuctured and uppity cluture, the English - so you can understand why they are a little edgy yet trying to control themsleves with laws and rules - lots of them!

Also, the labour movement was really born here with the huge onset of mining and a population of workers that were not going to put up with the same mistreatment they came from in England during the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, the minimum and normal wages are huge, and sometimes workers are crinkly and will only do what they have to - no apologies for being unhelpful or rude either. Now this is NOT everyone but I notice it more so - reminds me of home, no worse than home because there are NO or little tips given so no one has incentive to *outperform* to make more money. Very Left Wing yet the people are quite adventurous and wild. Strange indeed!