Nothing in Australia Tried to Kill Me Except For…

by Posted on

Everything you hear about Australia seems to include the statement, “and everything there can kill you.” A reference to the number of venomous creatures and predators that inhabit the country. If you don’t believe me, read this. When anticipating our trip, I fully expected to have daily encounters with said creatures and spend much of my time fending off giant spiders and slithering snakes. Alas, that never happened and in five weeks I saw just one tiny, innocuous-looking spider. I killed it just in case!

The morning we boarded.

What I didn’t expect was to survive a train collision. That sounds dramatic, right? We had the opportunity to go on The Ghan. A train that goes down the middle of Australia from Darwin to Adalaide. In the moment the crash wasn’t bad. I was sitting in our room and felt a hard bump. Then another. The train screeched to a halt and the power went out.

I went out in the hall and chatted with neighbors as staff beginning running through the halls and outside.

We heard we’d been hit—WHAT?—by a road train which is what they call big semis that carry three to five trailers behind them. The one that hit us had three trailers filled with cows – the cows survived. (Although, I suspect that since they were being transported their life expectancy wasn’t good.)

Courtesy ABC

We were in the middle of nowhere about forty miles from the nearest town, Alice Springs. Somehow no one was seriously injured. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital to be treated for shock. You can read the news story here.

The crew rapidly put a plan together. The chefs who weren’t expecting to have to feed 200 people, threw together a late lunch. Buses came to pick us up and take us to Alice Springs. If not for the crash, we would have spent the day there. We couldn’t do the planned tours because it was mid-afternoon. But they took us to a beautiful, scared site to the indigenous people called Simpsons Gap.

We were bussed back to the train station to see the train sitting there and everyone cheered. We also got a closer look at the damage. It doesn’t look too bad, right? I was two cars behind the one hit. On the train we were told we’d be taken to the planned dinner under the stars and after we’d leave for our next stop of Coober Peaty.

The dinner under the stars was at a sand quarry. A beautiful place and a fantastic night filled with delicious food, stunning views, the funniest and most informative talk about the stars, a wonderful band, and dancing. It was a highlight of the trip. The photos below: the staff loaned Christine and I their hats for the photo, our new friends from New Zealand and Seattle, the backdrop for our dinner, and the last one is when they turned all the lights off but the moon was illuminating the table. I’ll spare you the dancing photos.

Back at the train, people drifted back to the lounges – four cars per lounge. We’d already made new friends, and I think the experience made us closer. Talk turned to the crash. The what ifs. What if it had happened five seconds earlier and we’d plowed into one of the massive cow trailers? What if it had happened five seconds later and the truck had plowed into a passenger car instead of the locomotive taking the brunt of the hit? Either scenario meant a probable derailment and a good chance that I wouldn’t be writing this.

The train didn’t end up taking off that night because the rail people decided the cars had to be inspected. And since Australia is such a big country an inspector had to fly in the next morning. Even though the locomotive didn’t look too bad, it was deemed too damaged to use. Fortunately the other locomotive was fine, so we continued on our journey with just one. Because of the delay we had an extra day on the train with our new friends and a great day at the opal mining town of Coober Peaty which included lunch in an opal mine.

The staff on The Ghan was amazing under extremely difficult circumstances. They were our heroes and had to work an extra, unplanned day but did so cheerfully and with grace. Below is a picture of me at the Majestic Breakaways near Coober Peaty, happy to be out enjoying the day.

There was much joking about me being a mystery author, the book Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, and how two hundred passengers could plan to kill someone in a train accident.

Readers: Have you been on an adventure that took an interesting turn or had a day that made you think what a difference five seconds could make?

Unknown's avatar

Published by Sherry Harris

Sherry Harris is the author of the Agatha Award nominated Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery series and the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Mystery series.

29 Thoughts

  2. Wow, Sherry. What an adventure! I’m so grateful you all made it out alive. But tell us, how did the semi and the truck collide at all? The train must signal its approach, no?

    I’ve had the five-second WHEW experience, driving on the freeway in the fast lane. Just as I passed by, a crazy speeder came up on my right trying to get past someone. Instead they collided, spun around, hit a few other cars, and caused a massive pileup. Five – or even two – seconds later, I would have been part of it.

    Like

    1. Yikes, Edith! That is scary. I read an article that said there’s a dip at that intersection that makes it hard to see the train. It’s in the middle of nowhere so there aren’t crossing signals. But one wonders if the driver wasn’t paying close attention.

      Like

  3. Oh my! So I have a long-standing interest in train crashes. Sounds morbid, I know, but I wrote my PhD diss on Victorian railway disasters and how they appeared everywhere in the medical, legal, and popular literature of the 1850s-1890s. People like Charles Dickens crawled out of them (the railway cars often overturned — unlike yours, where thankfully the damage was pretty minor) and later suffered what some medical men called “railway spine” — the precursor to PTSD. Anyway, I am very glad your accident was not too serious and everyone including the cows was ok! Australia is on my bucket list, along with New Zealand… I’ve never been. Thanks for sharing your story, Sherry!

    Like

  4. What an adventure!!! I’m guessing it will inspire a new mystery!
    I’ve had travel adventures, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s but nothing close to a dangerous situation (as far as I know!)

    Like

  5. Sherry, what an adventure! And how fortunate that all went well…and you were not left in the midst of the outback with only shanks mare to get you out. The friendships made are likely firmer than if the journey had gone as planned. Happy travels.

    Like

  6. What a grand adventure! Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt and you were able to continue on your journey.

    The thing that stands out in my mind about a change of plans happens to be our last trip. With all the year long planning, we were still derailed by the forest fires. It meant checking reports daily and once finding a new route because of closures. It ended up with us seeing part of the country we hadn’t planned on going through with some amazing sights seen that otherwise we would have missed. At the time, we decided to change our route, the road was open but expected delays. We found out later that the fire had increased in intensity rapidly and the road had been completely closed. If we had gone that way, we would have been turned back meaning more miles only to have had to of taken the road we had. Then you do the what ifs and wonder what if you had gone through and gotten cut off in the middle of the raging fire. It was by the grace of God that we got the nudge to find another way that day.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

    Like

  8. That adventure is a lot more exciting than any old cable guy adventure! Sounds like you had a great trip! (BTW, I was also in a train crash once, although I didn’t make any new friends!)

    Like

  10. Sherry, what an experience! I loved Australia and New Zealand but never got to the Oz interior like you did. I’m so glad you’re okay and so are the cows! And that the experience led to new adventures and friendships.

    Like

  12. Your trip sounds amazing. Glad all were safe, including the cows.

    I was in a small overloaded boat on Lake Titicaca when the engine kept dying. The boat leaked and had to be continually bailed. There were only 4 life jackets for 25 people. We were barely in sight of land and I’m a very lousy swimmer. Did I mention that it had grown dark? Lake Titicaca is enormous. This was years before mobile phones. We were not going to be seen. This experience changed my life. I decided if I didn’t survive, I had the most gorgeous view of the night sky for the final minutes of my life. Acceptance can be a beautiful thing.

    Like

  14. Once I went with my sister on an adventure with our bicycles. I led the way downhill with trees on either side. I kept pressing my hand brakes but they didn’t seem so be slowing me down. I hit a fence, flew over and landed on my stomach with my bike laying on top of me. My sister was laughing her head off. I looked up and missed hitting my head on this giant rock by an inch.

    Like

Comments are closed.