It was still Sunday and after our early morning trip and breakfast, we were able to sit back and enjoy the ride. By now we were crossing the Nullarbor Plain which, as the name suggests, is an almost treeless area of semi-arid country. It is the world’s largest single exposure of limestone bedrock of about 200,000 square kilometres. To start with there was a very red soil and some lovely, blobby eucalyptus trees but these gradually disappeared and we were left looking out of the stones vast plains. There was no wildlife to be seen and only the occasional pile of bleached bones at the side of the track.
We spent the afternoon in the Outback Explorer lounge trying to blog but there is no reception to be had out here. Then we joined in a trivia quiz run by Adam the singer. It became quite competitive but Jane and I were a bit poor! Even getting the age of Princess Elizabeth when she ascended to the throne wrong. We noticed that lots of our fellow travellers were making the most of the free bar onboard and we finally gave in at 4pm and ordered a glass of wine!
Along the way we stopped at Rawlina which is one of the largest sheep stations in Australia with 30,000 sheep over 2.5 million acres of land. But today there was not a single sheep to be seen.
We also travelled along the single longest stretch of straight railway in the world at 478kms and now we passed into Southern Australia where the clocks moved forward by 2.5 hours!
Our final stop of the day was in Cook, firmly in the middle of nowhere. It used to be a service centre for the railway but had been abandoned in 1997 and now only 4 people live here. Including the splendid fellow who had prepared our bonfire and lantern trail. So after dinner with nice Nigel and Gareth from South Africa now living in Stroud, we all got off the train and enjoyed a sing song round the fire and gazing at the stars above us. It was a very clear night and the Milky Way looked awesome. The singing was lead by our own Adam but also joined by the very chipper Adam Thompson from the Ozzie group Chocolate Starfish who were quite big in the 1990s, apparently.
It had been a very long day and so it was back to the cabin for a good nights sleep.
Where shall we go to next? 
Oh dear. You do know what a chocolate starfish is, don’t you?
Also known as a rusty sheriff’s badge.
Eeek. Xx