Ghan celebrates 80 years of outback train travel

Celebrating with Spirit

The Ghan will celebrate its 80th anniversary in August. The legendary train, named after the Afghan camel drivers who helped open Australia\'s interior, left Adelaide for the first time on August 4, 1929.

Since then, it has travelled 25 million kilometres or, to put it another way, the equivalent of 625 times around the world.

Right from the start, the intention was that the railway line would extend to Darwin but finances dictated otherwise and it took until February 4, 2004, before the Ghan chugged into Darwin.

To celebrate this year\'s anniversary and to stimulate business, Great Southern Rail (GSR), the Ghan\'s owner, has a choice of eight free tour and accommodation packages on new bookings made before June 3. Some of the add-ons are valued at $600.

Also, GSR is to push ahead with the Southern Spirit rail journeys it launched and then shelved last year. The Southern Spirit, which is separate from the Ghan, is described as cruising on wheels because it has 24-hour room service, meals, entertainment and off-rail excursions. Guests stay in hotels when there are multi-day stopovers in towns.

GSR management says the Southern Spirit will operate in January and February, 2010, travelling from Uluru to Sydney and Uluru to Brisbane and return.

For example, the 13-day Grand Tour starts in Uluru and ends in Brisbane, travelling via Alice Springs, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. Tours and special events on that itinerary include opal mining in Cooper Pedy, Hunter Valley wine tastings and a close encounter with seals on Kangaroo Island. Prices range from $8990 to $13,990. See gsr.com.au.

Economy slows adventurers

From a small town in Canada, Bruce Poon Tip (pictured) created the world\'s largest adventure company, GAP Adventures.

Not surprisingly for a man who started the company on his credit card, Poon Tip is upbeat about the travails besetting the travel industry, or at least his section of it.

GAP Adventures, which last year took 85,000 travellers on more than 1000 different trips in 100 countries, has not been affected as dramatically as companies catering to more conventional markets, he says.

\"But adventure is different,\" he says. \"It always has been. Adventurers are willing to take a few risks anyway.\"

He concedes bookings are softer than he has seen in 19 years in the business. His prediction is that the industry will take two years to get back to where it was before last year\'s meltdown.

\"All travellers, Aussies included, are booking later,\" he says, making it hard for companies to hold their nerve (and keep their bankers at bay).

Poon Tip says this is apparent in bookings for his latest venture, the MV Expedition, the replacement ship for the Explorer, which went down in the Antarctic Ocean after hitting an iceberg in November 2007.

In sounder economic times, the trips to Antarctica, scheduled for the second half of the year, would be filling fast, he says. \"We\'re getting there but it\'s slower.\"

See gapadventures.com.

Portrait of success

Cultural tourism has long been regarded as one of the ACT\'s drawcards. Figures suggest it attracts in more than 750,000 annually with up to 70 per cent being interstate visitors.

Certainly, there were high expectations for the Degas exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, which ran over the summer and closed last Sunday.

Exhibition attendance failed to reach the lofty heights set by the Turner To Monet blockbuster exhibit of the previous year, but visitors topped 150,000 over four months. Kirsten Downie, the head of marketing and communications for the National Gallery, says the French-themed gallery shop set up for the duration of the exhibition broke all records.