The Ghan

The Ghan is a passenger train between Adelaide, Alice Springs, and Darwin on the Adelaide–Darwin railway in Australia. Operated by Great Southern Rail, it takes 54 hours to travel the 2,979 kilometres (1,851 mi) with a four-hour stopover in Alice Springs.

Etymology

The service's name is an abbreviated version of its previous nickname The Afghan Express. This nickname is reputed to have been bestowed in 1923 by one of its crews. The train's name honours Afghan camel drivers who arrived in Australia in the late 19th century to help find a way to reach the country's unexplored interior.

A contrary view is that the name was a veiled insult. In 1891, the railway from Quorn reached remote Oodnadatta where an itinerant population of around 150 cameleers were based, generically called 'Afghans'. 'The Ghan Express' name originated with train crews in the 1890s as a taunt to officialdom because, when an expensive sleeping car was put on from Quorn to Oodnadatta, 'on the first return journey the only passenger was an Afghan', mocking its commercial viability. By as early as 1924, because of the notorious unreliability of this fortnightly steam train, European pastoralists commonly called it 'in ribald fashion The Afghan Express'. By 1951, when steam engines were replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, this disparaging derivation, like the cameleers, had faded away. Modern marketing has completed the name turnabout.