Author Description

As our grandfathers ventured east and west from the urban outskirts of this nation to the fringes of that no-man's-land where so many pioneers had perished, could they ever have believed that a means would be found whereby Australians would relax in air-conditioned luxury, surrounded by all the amenities of a world-class hotel, and be swept in three short days from coast to coast of this seemingly illimitable continent. The Indian-Pacific is more than a train; it is a silver ribbon of steel that crosses a continent on an exclusive right-of-way to link one vast ocean to another; it is one of the greatest achievements of the post-war world, and it is a journey through a folk-memory. Patsy Adam-Smith and Lindsay Rodda traveled those 2,461 miles across the sun-belt of a continent; one unbroken gauge from Sydney's neon lights over mountains, through the mining vitality of South Australia, across the arid heart with its lonely settlements and unique personalities to the beauty and prosperity of Perth. A shifting kaleidoscope of color, vegetation, humor, character, visual beauty, desolation, growth, decay, discovery - all the excitement of this tremendous rail-trip is captured by the vital narrative of the author and intensified by Lindsay Rodda's dramatic and evocative photographs.