Australia by Bicycle - page 3
Forty days' bike tour across Australia, by Jan Boonstra.
No more trains at the old station of Pine Creek
The Englishman John McDouall Stuart surveyed a route to Darwin overland in 1870, opening the central part of Australia for Western discovery. This lead to the construction of the Stuart Highway, linking Darwin on the north coast with Port Augusta on the south coast. Long before cars could travel this route, a telegraph line was built in 1872, which was connected with a network in Indonesia, making it possible to send telegrams from Melbourne and Sydney all the way to London. Many settlements along the route, like Pine Creek, owe their existence to the construction of this telegraph line.
One construction project, however, was never completed: the railroad between Darwin and the south. It had been a political issue for years, construction started, then halted, and then started and halted again at various places and moments. From the south, the railroad reaches Alice Springs and is still in operation today. From Darwin, the railroad used to reach a bit further than Larrimah at some 500 kilometres. But further construction was abandoned and train services stopped in 1976. Nowadays, the tracks are overgrown and old railway stations stand as monuments of a lost battle of human civilization against the harsh elements of nature in the outback.
Interesting links referring to the region:
There is also a complete daily log of this tour, but only in Dutch.
