Watch
a video of the race here
In 1939 Woolf Barnato, one of the famous Bentley Boys, wagered £200 that he
could beat Le Train Bleu over the 700 miles from Cannes to London. Barnato
won handsomely. These days, though, finding a route to race automobile
against locomotive is much harder. Instead of a contest between two modes of
transport it usually becomes a test of how bad the traffic is. But the
recent extension of the trans-Australian Ghan line from Adelaide to Darwin
has breathed new life into the challenge. We sent two correspondents to
rekindle the rivalry between tyre and track
LAND ROVER - Jeremy Hart
I’m 225 miles from Adelaide, passing the troglodytic mining outpost of Coober
Pedy and trying to prove that a 190bhp Land Rover Discovery can hold its own
against an 8000bhp train.
At the national speed limit of 110kph (68mph) it will take me three hours and
12 minutes to reach the first stop on my 1,875-mile journey: an underground
hotel room cut from an ancient opal mine. Six hours out of the capital of
South Australia, the outback starts to play tricks on my mind. The progress
may be mind-numbingly slow but temptations to stop are thankfully few.
Every second the wheels aren’t turning costs time, so my meals are F1-style
pit stops. I know I’ve got to rush because by nightfall the tables will
turn. As I slumber, the Ghan will slide past Coober Pedy and into the lead.
So as the sun sets it is tempting to keep going; thanks to a full moon it’s
bright enough to drive, although dangers lurk everywhere. A big red kangaroo
springs out in front of me, missing the bumper by an inch. It’s a reminder
that if you have an accident here it could take days for help to arrive. If
you want to experience the world’s most accessible desert, meet the
characters, feel the heat, sample the smells of bush fires, wild thyme and
bull dust and experience the vastness and isolation, come here to the
outback.
Across the border in the Northern Territory the small towns are separated by
long stretches of empty highway, so the Discovery is soon at full chat and I
am eating up two miles a minute; the train can manage only half that. In the
first hour over the border I notch up 119 miles and in the second 121.
The next speed-limit sign is not until Alice Springs, which is where road and
train converge, squeezing through the Gap, a narrow door in the McDonnell
mountain range. My mobile chirrups: it’s my race partner John Arlidge.
“We’re coming into Alice. Where are you?” “Just pulling up to the platform,”
I reply.
John has the luxury of four hours’ sightseeing in Alice, so I leap back into
the car and rocket north. The outback is one endless swathe of scrub until
you get to Tennant Creek, where it turns lush, the red earth offset by
vibrant electric-green bushes. In the 180 or so miles between Tennant Creek
and Katherine, someone cranks up the heat to 40C. In Katherine I grab a few
hours of kip and the best food of the drive so far — a monster barramundi
fish burger.
Next morning it’s the very last blast. I have no idea where the Ghan has got
to. The railway line up here is 30 miles west of the road. I drive blind and
hope that — despite yet another nighttime break — I am in shape to make
Darwin first. The Discovery has never been pushed so hard: the speedo is at
120mph all the time.
Adelaide River is the next road and rail intersection. There’s a colonial
railway station next to the level crossing that dates from the gold rush
era. Trevor Horman is the station master. “She’ll be here in 10 minutes,” he
tells me as I lean out of the window. “She won’t catch you now — she slows
right down into Darwin.”
I’m shattered, unshaven, full of junk food but on a high. Like Captain Woolf
Barnato three-quarters of a century ago, I’ve proven that the car is still
capable of beating the train.
Forget the Bentley Boys, for I am the Land Rover man.
TRAIN - John Arlidge
I’ve got a team of eight drivers. My 132-ton vehicle cranks out 8000bhp and
can run for 24 hours nonstop on its 2,600-gallon diesel tank. That’s the
good news.
The bad news is that my top speed is 65mph — glacial by the standards of the
arrow-straight Stuart Highway. I have to stop to pick up hundreds of
passengers along the way and I’m already late leaving — 60 years late.
The transcontinental Australian railway linking Adelaide and Darwin was
supposed to have been completed after the war. The track was finally
finished three years ago.
It took even longer for the first train, named the Ghan after the Afghan
cameleers who blazed a trail into the centre of the continent, to limp into
Darwin.
As I leave Adelaide’s Keswick station and clang-clatter the first of the 1,875
miles north from the Southern Ocean, I know it’s going to be close.
Any long land journey, let alone the longest of my life, is bound to throw up
some tough challenges, and just minutes into the trip I confront the first.
“Would you like the New Zealand Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc or the Peter
Lehmann Barossa shiraz for your aperitif?” asks Marcia Van-Hout, who is in
charge of my Gold Kangaroo cabin.
I raise my glass of crisp flinty white to Jeremy, who will spend the next two
days living on local pies — nicknamed Maggot Packs — washed down with
Passiona, sickly sweet passion fruit fizz.
My surroundings make Jeremy’s Land Rover look more XXXX than five star. I have
two beds, a basin, a shower and a lavatory. Through the sound system I can
listen to a commentary on my journey. When I get bored I can walk to the bar
or the 1950s restaurant.
The sun is sinking over the Flinders mountain range when I take my seat for
dinner. As Jeremy scours the roadside for kangaroos, I prepare to eat one,
grilled medium rare and served with juniper berries.
The steel wheels shake through the first of the 41 towns en route to our first
stop, Alice Springs. The orange lights of Port Augusta, burning like a
bushfire, are behind us and Tarcoola and Kulgera lie ahead.
Where will Jeremy sleep tonight, I wonder, as I climb into my bunk? The back
of the Discovery? A trucker’s roadhouse? One of the noisy, flyblown
backpacker hostels?
Knock. Knock. “Your coffee, sir,” says Van-Hout. “Welcome to the Northern
Territory.” I raise the blind to reveal one of the great Australian sights.
Gone are the greens and yellows of South Australia. Now the rich ochres of
the desert, studded with termite mounds, stretch to the horizon and beyond.
When I arrive in Alice, the halfway mark, the temperature is nudging 44C in
the shade and Jeremy is feeling the heat. “I only just got here,” he pants
as he climbs out of the Discovery, parked on the platform next to my cabin.
It’s a dead heat in the heat. I try to tempt Jeremy into a delay with offers
of coffee, croissants and a shower — he certainly needs one — but he’s
determined to get back on the road.
By the time the Ghan crawls out of Australia’s Red Centre, the Land Rover is
comfortably ahead but I have the nighttime advantage. Dennis and his team of
seven co-drivers rumble on nonstop.
After another starlit supper and a night in my rocking bunk, I pull into
Katherine, where — ha! — Jeremy is nowhere to be seen. I celebrate with a
swim in the Katherine gorge.
There’s still no sign of Jeremy when the train leaves for the final 300
“clicks” into Darwin. I order champagne to toast my victory with the grilled
salmon salad lunch — when disaster strikes.
Halfway between Katherine and Darwin the road runs alongside the railway line
and there, streaking along, is the black Discovery. With the Land Rover’s
top speed of 120mph, it’s game over.
As palm trees replace eucalyptus and we ease through the porridge-thick
tropical air into Darwin, Jeremy is already on the platform. “Welcome to the
Top End,” he says as he showers me with Aussie fizz.
He may have beaten me on time but that’s only part of the story. I’ve crossed
Australia in style. I’ve sipped fresh coffee while watching the sun crack
the shell of an outback night. I’ve swum in cool remote waters to the sound
of birdsong and crickets.
I’ve enjoyed a sundowner and dinner while rocking through land with no sign of
human beings for hundreds of miles. The Land Rover my be quicker but the
Ghan is the ultimate Aussie stretch limo.
Jeremy Hart and John Arlidge flew with Qantas, www.qantas.com.
For more information on travelling in Australia visit www.australia.com
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