Before the arrival of the railway,
the only way to get supplies to Alice Springs was by camel train. The
camels originally arrived with their Afghani handlers, so the railway
earned the nickname of Ghan in honour of these pioneers,
The railway finally reached Alice Springs in the 1920s, but it
was a narrow-guage track and trains were frequently stranded if
heavy
rain washed away the trackbed. In 1980 the line was rebuilt
with standard-guage track and re-routed further west so it was
out of the Finke River's floodplain.
|
