Since then the legendary train to Alice Springs, known as The Ghan, has more or less stayed on the rails. I am boarding in Adelaide an air-conditioned reincarnation of that hero of Australian rail lore; fittingly, it is called The Legendary Ghan.

As The Ghan rolls past backyards and car yards, then through the greenback fields of wine and wheat north of the city, I begin exploring the train. In the lounge car, where tourists are settling in to being each other's captive audience for the next 22 hours, a more than middle-aged man does a nifty two-step past me, waving a bottle of champagne.

"Gidday," he chortles.

"Gidday," I riposte, inventively.

"I'm celebrating. My seventh anniversary."

"Where's the wife?" I ask.

"That's it — I'm celebrating being divorced seven years."

And disappears.

Around the bar passengers are already swapping versions of 'How The Ghan got its name'. Common knowledge has it that in the 1860s, some 34 Afghan tribesmen from north-western British India, plus 120 camels, were brought to South Australia to help carry supplies to remote Outback stations. The local predilection for abbreviating names soon truncated 'Afghans' to ''Ghans'. The arrival in the 1920s of the railway spelled the demise of the camel but, ironically, the train that displaced the Afghans itself became known as The Ghan.

"That's fitting," observes one woman. "But who gave the train its name?"

The most reliable story says that in 1923, when the first train from Adelaide to Oodnadatta pulled into an intermediate station, Quorn, at sunset, an Afghan jumped from the almost empty train and strode to the Mecca end of the platform to say his prayers. The engine driver joked to several onlookers, "Since he's the only passenger on this train, we'll have to call it 'the Afghan Express'." The name stuck and like everything unnecessary in this desert, its superfluous syllables were soon sloughed off. The train, too, became The Ghan.

In 1980 Australian National Railways closed the original, flood-prone line (300km to the east) over which The Ghan had lumbered so tardily that it was known as "the service you can check your watch by" — if the train was on time, you knew your watch was wrong. The two-day, 1555km journey from Adelaide to Alice might take up to two months. Tales were told of flood-bound trains marooned in the desert for so long that drivers fished in new-born rivers or shot wild goats in order to feed their passengers.

One old-time guard tells me that after a while the Air Force would organise a food drop to the stranded train. "I didn't want to go out there in the scrub searching for the food, and get all muddy. So I organised a competition — free beer for the adult or free lemonade for the kid who brought back the most food after the plane went over. Trouble was the Air Force just used crates, no parachutes. Everything burst. The countryside was covered in plum jam and flour."

"Gidday, again," says the gent who seats himself beside me in the restaurant car. It's the champagne man. His bubbly is now gone but he seems as happy as ever. He introduces himself as "Bert — from Darwin. I'm a retired minister." As part of his work he travelled this region for 30 years.

"You must have ridden the old Ghan?" I ask.

"Couldn't afford to. The bastard was too unreliable. You knew you'd get there — but you never knew when."

Morning comes as a line of low orange fire. Occasional signs of life blur across the screen of my window: trashed cars miles from anywhere; a satellite dish X-rayed by the orange dawn, its stark ribs like a giant butterfly wing. Rains fell several weeks ago, and now the desert tones have flushed to a salmon pink dusted with new green vegetation.

The ochre soils of Australia's red heart flash by. Feral donkeys and kangaroos scatter. As we cross the border into the Northern Territory, I wander back through the sleeper cabins of Holiday Class and then to Coach Class. For distraction, there's an entertainment car full of video games and poker machines (making this, for some, a 1500km casino), a buffet car and overhead video screens to ease the eye away from the relentless horizon.

Between me and Adelaide are 2,330,000 railway sleepers. Lost for further stories, I look around at the intense blue Alice sky, as cobalt bright as I remember it almost 30 years ago. Bert appears, as is his wont, from nowhere.

"Have a great trip to the Rock, old boy," he says.

"You, too, Bert. Have a good one."

"My oath, yes!"

I've got to say it. "Bert. At times you don't sound much like a minister."

He looks around. "Shsssh, mate. Not so loud. There are three things people hate — used car salesmen, undertakers and politicians."

"So?"

"I used to be the Minister for Roads in these parts."

And then he disappears.

Seeing the country by train is a once in a lifetime experience so you'd better make tracks!