Glammed out in cocktail attire—a must on the Great South Pacific Express—and fortified with a few cocktails taken in the bar car, I stepped around the musicians performing a tune from “Cats” and allowed the maître d’ to tuck me into a padded dining chair.
This is when I first noticed the Dutch tour operator who resembled Joel Grey in “Cabaret.” He was seated with a couple who might have caused raised eyebrows anywhere else: a Norma Desmond look-alike and her much younger, chisel-chinned paramour. They were deliberating over a list of Australian wines, aided by an obsequious sommelier.
One of the greatest pleasures of solo travel is shameless eavesdropping, and I was getting an earful.
Apparently Norma Desmond had met the train’s chef in Bali and then again in the Maldives. The lover, clearly bored, sucked down a martini then stared a tad too intently at Joel Grey, who was busy ordering ocean trout sushi with salmon pearls.
When the Russian actress appeared, resplendent in a turquoise shimmer of a midriff blouse and raspberry parachute pants, she wore a quarter-sized solitaire diamond and an endless drape of pearls. She was followed by her financier husband, morose and severe, who my cabin steward later swore was with the Russian mob.
Once seated, the actress ordered “bugs”—Australian for crayfish—and her husband chose the Murray River eye fillet.
The train itself
The Great South Pacific Express itself was a remarkable work of art. More than 120 Queensland craftsmen worked overtime to recreate the Edwardian elegance of the great railway era. Fourteen wooden carriages, built between 1903 and 1944, were restored using indigenous materials.
The over-the-top opulence—solid red cedar and Tasmanian myrtle burl paneling, intricate marquetry, embroidered silk panels in the dining cars, Queensland maple furniture with mahogany inlays, clerestory ceilings, veranda balustrading and etched glass lighting fixtures formed into flowers—was very 1899.
Flying low over the reef to the pontoon’s mooring off Hardy Reef, we spotted the amazing dreamscape of Whitehaven Island. A merging of white sand with jade green water, the area is considered sacred by Aboriginals. It is incomparably beautiful and unlike anything I have seen before.
Once aboard the pontoon we ate a buffet lunch of buffalo sausage and beef. Then it was over the side to snorkel or dive.
With the canopy of so many bodies breaking waves on the reef, it seemed highly improbable any marine life would stick around even for a possible feeding. But I overestimated my traveling companions.
The Russian mobster went back to the train and the actress sulked, slowly dribbling ketchup onto a plate. The rest of the group jumped in and out of the water—kamikaze snorkelers more interested in Mai Tais than marine life.
I was soon alone on the reef.
I swam through formations of some 300 species of coral with monstrously large groupers, leatherback turtles and barracuda in turquoise, paddling along beside me.
