It's a balmy night under stringed festoon lights in Coffs Harbour. Tightly-packed trees cocoon an outdoor communal dining 'village' where long tables draped with white linen form neat rows on the grass; the deep blue South Pacific Ocean mere footsteps away.
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Seated for dinner, fresh locally caught oysters arrive on a shared plate and discussion among the nine of us starts - how do you eat them exactly?
"You can chew on them; you don't have to swallow them," a fellow guest says.
I'm hesitant, but give one a go, loosening the mollusc from its shell with a fork before tipping it in. I easily bite through the soft meat, its texture like a soft and pillowy gnocchi, with just a hint of salt. I chew my next three... or four, in quick succession.
For four days, I'm joining 159 guests plus 36 crew on board the Great Southern - a train service offered by Journey Beyond running near Australia's eastern borders. We're travelling during late December from Brisbane to Adelaide via Coffs Harbour, the Hunter region and the outskirts of Melbourne.
Along the way we'll see cattle, tree plantations, sheep of all kinds, the expansive Hawkesbury River, densely packed hills and wide, rolling valleys, all from the comfort of a sprawling lounge and intimate restaurant on rails.
Beside the magnificent and ever-changing views, this experience is also subtly, but consciously, about the cuisine; each on-board meal has a feature ingredient native to, or found, along the route. I want to know, what does the food taste like as I look out the window?
The menu/the journey
We check in at Hanworth House, a beautiful East Brisbane home built in the 1860s for Lieutenant George Poynter Heath, Queensland's first portmaster. A bus escorts us to board the train at Acacia Ridge Pacific National Brisbane Freight Terminal, a national railyard where we share lines with freight trains as the Great Southern is too long for a suburban station.
My room is a twin with its own ensuite. A panel drops down to reveal a bunk that still leaves plenty of headroom for the three-person bench seat below that converts into a bed, and the big picture window allows for plenty of light.
The feature ingredients across our menus for the next few days include lemon myrtle, blood orange, beetroot, bush tomato, quandong and honey.
Crossing the Queensland/New South Wales border onboard, lunch arrives in the Queen Adelaide restaurant with our first key ingredient, lemon myrtle, featured in a syrup with caramelised pineapple, Gelista lemon and yuzu sorbets. The matte-finished golden brown colours of the pineapple act as a bedrock for the syrup's gloss that catches light from outside. This looks and tastes like summer.
Looking out the window, an embankment dotted with greenery and a sandy light-yellow soil slowly slopes away from the train. Suddenly, the embankment disappears, revealing dry paddocks with cattle grazing on tufts of grass.
Arriving at Coffs Harbour for dinner at Pacific Bay Resort, I take a glass of local sparkling wine and walk a few steps along a shaded, sandy alleyway to the cove-like Charlesworth Bay Beach. Near-180 degree views of the South Pacific Ocean stretch open as the sun sets, with barely a ripple at the water's edge. Aside from the aforementioned oysters, we're also treated to a shared barbecue of local black angus eye fillet plus catch of the day, Mahi Mahi, served with zesty lemon and bitey capers.
By morning, we pull into my first chosen off-train experience - the Lower Hunter Valley for wine tasting. A coach collects us from Maitland, where colonial buildings from the town's early 19th century boom period help illustrate bygone stories of farming, flour mills, breweries, iron workers, blacksmiths and saddlers.
Grapes in the region date back to about the 1820s. We visit two wineries in Pokolbin, hailed as the Hunter's wine capital with its highest concentration of wineries in the region.
Tulloch Wines, established in 1895, is a fourth-generation business with a stately two-storey cellar door and function space, manicured gardens boasting magnolias the size of dinner plates; I feel like I've arrived at a private residence. We take a seat for a wine and chocolate-pairing session including prosecco, verdelho and shiraz. To me, the wines seem to be lighter bodied with more transparency than southern state offerings.
Next is the comparatively modern Brokenwood Wines, co-founded by critic James Halliday in the early 1970s. The tasting pods inside the cellar door make it fun to watch people's reactions as they try their samples across from me. The heavier shirazes in particular seem to be a hit.
We converge at Twine Hunter Valley for lunch, where I can't resist the confit chicken maryland marinated in thyme, lemon zest and garlic with a red wine jus. After appreciating the relatively light wines earlier, this fits the bill of being perfectly satisfying.
Back on board the train, the Hawkesbury River looks magnificent - the late afternoon sun's light filtered by clouds as we go over the expansive body of water. A few of us try the train's signature cocktail, A Splash of Summer, made with rum elderflower liqueur, sugar syrup, lime juice, orange juice, a splash of ginger beer and a half slice of orange and a mint sprig to garnish.
By day three, we've made it to Victoria and I wake up to a misty window. Making my way to breakfast, my hearty full breakfast with eggs on toast, bacon and country-style chipolata, is spiced up with bush tomato chutney - the feature ingredient.
I relax in the lounge car, chatting with passengers I've become friends with. Most have travelled at least on The Ghan or the Indian Pacific and wanted to try this 'new' route, which started in late 2019. Most are retired or no longer work full time, but they are all full of life - talking about other train trips they've been on and countries they've visited, comparing itineraries, and musings about the state of the world.
Arriving at my second off-train chosen experience, a lunch at Clyde Park Estate in Moorabool Valley - just outside of Melbourne. I'm struck by the intensity of the property's deep and dense green colours. The wines I try, including a shiraz and pinot rose sparking rose, are more full-bodied compared with the Hunter's.
We finish the night with a singalong in our lounge car. Our train's resident musician, Kevin Jones, is delightful with a wide repertoire with the braver (or easily coerced) souls taking to the microphone to lead a mass karaoke session. It's not as rowdy as you'd expect - after all we are in a moving train.
Sleeping on the top bunk this time, I wake a few times during the night. There's mist at 5am as we make our way through South Australia; the foliage a lot denser and closer to the window as we pass through the Adelaide Hills. Seated for breakfast, we find honey is the star ingredient, slivers of suburbia outside poke through gum trees far more lush than up north. Finally, we can see Adelaide, which on a clear day would have views out to the Southern Ocean.
Disembarking at the Mile End train station, possibly a kilo or two heavier, I feel so fulfilled and inspired, having seen so much of the country in a short space of time. It's a curated journey where you get to appreciate the differences in produce, surroundings and people of the land between states. And that is a journey beyond imagination in itself.
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What is the Great Southern?
This service runs in summer when The Ghan doesn't due to Darwin's wet season. It also uses The Ghan's railcars and locomotives - just with the livery switched over - meaning passengers experience that train's high level of hospitality and comfort while exploring parts of Australia's east. Our train is 663m long, has two locomotives and weighs 1272 tonnes.
Don't look for individually seated numbers organised in pairs or groups of four for the journey; they don't exist. You spend most of your onboard experiences in the Outback Explorer lounge, which allows you to watch the evolving landscape pass by while swapping stories with fellow passengers about where to go next. The art deco-inspired interior has padded maroon and gold pelmets, which complement the purple berry motif woven in the lounges, giving a sense of opulence and comfort.
Another space where you will become well acquainted is the Queen Adelaide restaurant dining car. It too carries the art deco theme, where guests sit in booths of four and the colours have deeper, richer and warmer hues, increasing the intimacy and comfort.
Service operations manager Bruce Smith explains the experience best.
"The journey is about the tours you do and the interactions with your fellow guests in the lounge and dining cars. Everybody's got a story," he said.
"As the company name suggests; you're on a journey beyond where your normal roads or footpaths will take you."
Off the rails: Hunter's humidity versus Moorabool's continental climate
Doing back-to-back wine tastings across wineries and regions in different states helps develop an appreciation of how different climates and terrains produce such different tipples.
Starting in NSW, Wine Australia says soils in the Lower Hunter Valley range from sandy alluvial flats - ideal for semillon, to deep loam and friable red duplex soils - great for shiraz.
We begin our journey at Tulloch Wines, a four-generation winery whose history dates back to 1895 at Pokolbin. It was started by John Younie (J.Y.) Tulloch after accepting an unusual settlement for a debt - a 43 acre property with five acres of neglected shiraz vines on it.
We sit down for a tasting plate of wine with chocolate from local maker Donarch Fine Chocolate. I particularly take to the muscat-like creme de vin, which goes beautifully with the crisp snap of a coffee chocolate. But it's a shiraz cabernet, paired with a raspberry heart, that steals mine. Out of the lidded tray, the sweet treat gleams with its shiny and reflective outer shell; I feel like I'm eyeing off a precious jewel.
Next we visit Brokenwood Wines, established in 1970 and founded by a trio of Sydney-based solicitors, Tony Albert, John Beeston and James Halliday - from the well-respected wine bible Halliday Wine Companion. The original block was envisaged to be a community cricket ground, but cabernet sauvignon and shiraz grapes were planted instead.
Cellar door supervisor Oli Bulter serves us, and shares that the shirazes in the area are lighter because it's hotter and the grapes ripen faster. Two pique my attention: a relatively light 2021 shiraz that Oli suggests is good to drink with pizza or anything with a tomato base. Then came a single-block shiraz from 1920-planted grapes at Tallawanta vineyard. It's heavier, darker, and fuller bodied, reminding me of South Australian offerings.
The next day we're at Clyde Park Estate in Victoria's Moorabool Valley. I'm taken by its steep blocks criss-crossing in the valleys with reasonably tall grasses growing under the vines, the leaves and grass blades a solid green.
It's owned and operated by Sue Dixon and Terry Jongbloed, and they've focused on cool climate wines, in particular pinot noir and chardonnay, plus others. Terry tells me the site has tough soils, hard winds, and varies between volcanic and limestone bases. "It's very hard to grow fruit here, so it gives us incredibly low yields, but really intense flavours and magnificent natural acidity. We don't need to muck around as chemists; what you get is what you get," he says.
I try their new pinot noir sparkling rose, the first time they've made such a product in a traditional French style. It fizzes gently as it goes down the glass and has a certain weight to it. I take a bottle home with me.
Pushing preferences aside, seeing and learning about the places, plus meeting the faces who prune, pick, crush and bottle the stuff, makes me realise the passion and effort that goes into making what is poured in my glass.
TRIP NOTES:
Snapshot:
The Great Southern travels from Brisbane to Adelaide via Coffs Harbour, Hunter Valley and just outside Melbourne across four days and three nights, departing on Mondays.
Alternative off-train experiences on this trip include Port Stephens by land or by sea, a visit to Newcastle, a Hunter Valley helicopter ride, plus tours of the National Gallery of Victoria, MCG or Old Melbourne Gaol.
Gold twin accommodation starts at $3560 advance purchase.
It travels from Adelaide to Brisbane via Grampians, Canberra and Coffs Harbour across three days and two nights, departing on Fridays. Gold twin accommodation starts at $2455 advance purchase.
Getting there:
Jetstar, Qantas, Virgin and Rex offer domestic services to Adelaide and Brisbane.
Staying there:
We stayed at the Pullman King George Square in Brisbane. Prices start at $389 per night for a deluxe king room twin share.
More information:
The writer was a guest of Journey Beyond.
