A train that once ran three months late and was famous for being stopped by sand dunes, the Old Ghan was a true frontier adventure. The tale of its construction is a quintessentially Australian story of progress, with all its assumptions, optimism, miscomprehensions and failures, writes Jon Rose.

The present day Ghan is one of the world's great train rides, running nearly 3,000 kilometres from Adelaide to Darwin.

The story of the Old Ghan, which ran from Port Augusta to Alice Springs before its demise in 1980, is a story that takes us on a journey through collective memories of what it means to live on this continent, what we take and what we cannot have.

The history of the 'train to the north' is intertwined with the Afghans or 'Ghans' who gathered at the newly arrived railheads and sustained the ever-expanding exploitation of Centralia.

When the building of the Ghan was started in 1878, the white population of South Australia was no more than 300,000. The British had occupied Adelaide and its surrounds for a mere 30 years. After the successful building of the trans-Australian telegraph line in 1872, the authorities decided that South Australia should be connected to the Northern Territory and that a railway was required to maximise the great colonial adventure.

No one knows exactly who gave the Ghan its name. It was originally known as the Great Northern, then as the Central Australian, and finally as the Ghan. The history of the 'train to the north' is intertwined with the Afghans or 'Ghans' who gathered at the newly arrived railheads and sustained the ever-expanding exploitation of Centralia.

The Afghans, who were actually a diverse group from the area that is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, provided and controlled the transportation of goods and artefacts over vast tracts of Australia with their camels until the introduction of motorised conveyance in the 1930s. The Ghans went where the train had not yet reached; one cannot tell the story of the train without referencing the story of the cameleers.

In the late 1940s, there was a standard joke about when the train might arrive: this month, next month or December. Famously, the Old Ghan once arrived three months late in Alice Springs, after being delayed by floods in its cross-desert ramble from Adelaide.

The original Ghan was notorious for washouts on the one hand and sand dunes over its tracks on the other. The flatcar immediately behind the tender carried spare sleepers and railway tools, so that if a washout or sand drift was encountered, the passengers and crew could work as a railway gang to repair the line and permit the train to continue. According to the train timetables of 1949, the top speed allowed for the Ghan was 32 kilometres per hour; anything faster was considered dangerous.

The building of the Ghan railway produced frontier stories of extreme deprivation, hardship, spontaneous violence, ignorance, bravery, and of course the environmental conditions that eventually saw the original railway's demise only 50 years after it was finally finished.

The pioneers of that tough colonial adventure were an extremely positive bunch with an amazing ability to survive, improvise, create and entertain, with few resources at their disposal. How would we cope today in such circumstances?

Ghan Stories is the radiophonic outcome of a multi-media experience performed in collaboration with Performance Space in Sydney last year.

Ghan stories Friday 6 February 2015 Hear more of Jon Rose's story of the old Ghan railway at Soundproof. More This [series episode segment] has image,

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