By one-fifteen we were back collecting the luggage from the Great Southern and from there it was an increasingly familiar five minute walk to Central, where the check-in process proceeded as a well-oiled machine should. After forty years you'd expect things to be pretty much down pat, and they certainly seem to be.
Given the length of the train (twenty-five carriages in all) it starts off in two sections for boarding purposes and once were ensconced in Gold Class Car F Berths 7&8 and unpacked we had time to gather our thoughts while the front section of the train (ours) was shunted onto the rear end (the cheap seats) and receive briefings about the cabin, its features (particularly the bathroom and toilet facilities) and matters like meal times.
For the uninitiated, Gold Class meals on the Indian Pacific and The Ghan operate in two shifts, Red (early) and Blue (late) and meal times aren't consistent over the journey. They don't serve meals while the train's in a station and they don't split the eating bit into before and after options (difficult when you're there for two or three hours). That means that one option would have you dining late after Adelaide while the other has breakfasts rather earlier than you may prefer.
Day One going west, for example, had the Red Service at 6:00 with Blue two hours later. We'd gone the Blue but as I wrote this part of the travelogue heading out of Broken Hill, the Red Service had just been called (8:30 CST). Subsequent comments from people with a Red ticket suggested that staff tended to hurry you through your meal to make room for the other lot.
The first part of the run out of Sydney took us through Redfern and suburbs that presented an urban landscape much like the outskirts of any major city. Sydney's Summer Hill and Burswood are probably close to interchangeable with Brisbane's Yerongpilly and Loganlea and there are probably similar examples that could be cited for Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
From where we were sitting (looking south) there was nothing at Homebush to indicate the area had been warming up for the Olympics ten years previously, though blocks of units on the other side may well have been the Olympic Village. By 3:47 we were passing a rail yard at Clyde and discovering that the westering sun, as it sank towards the horizon, was going to be a real headache.
After a slow start we were noticeably gathering speed at Pendle Hill and by Blacktown we weren't exactly motoring but were definitely going places at a speed sufficient to reduce the Doonside station sign to an almost unreadable blur. On the outskirts of Penrith we were starting to come across patches of scrub, though there was plenty of urban sprawl in evidence as well.
After crossing the Nepean River and passing Emu Plains a sharp left hand turn started us onto the climb over the Blue Mountains, reducing the speed but taking the train to heights that provided extensive backward vistas remarkably quickly. As the climb continued the sun cut in and out each time the track twisted or turned through the hills. Looking out, cliffs that blocked the westward progress of the early settlers were quite obvious, though the rail track cheats by using tunnels to get through rather than over, the escarpments. Around 5:15 a sign indicated the presence of a Grandview Hotel, a reminder of home, but as we hit Katoomba darkness was upon us and that was it as far as viewing the scenery was concerned.
Since that was the case I took a wander towards the Club Car, passing through the Restaurant Car where the Red Service were onto their entrees. The Club Car was heavily populated as well, and we made our way there for the 6:30 Welcome Reception, where we were greeted with a complimentary glass of bubbles and evidence that, had we arrived earlier and downed the first while stragglers were making their way to the rendezvous, a second may well have been on offer.