Best luxury train journeys in Australia
Flying across Australia is fast and, frankly, a little wasteful of what makes the country interesting. You spend two hours staring at seatback screens and miss the exact thing that makes this place worth visiting: the sheer, uninterrupted scale of it. A long-distance train solves that problem entirely, and Australia happens to run three of the most celebrated luxury rail journeys on Earth.
These are not commuter trains with better seats. They are multi-day journeys with proper cabins, dining cars, and off-train excursions built into the ticket price, designed to be the holiday itself rather than a way of getting to one.
📋 TL;DR — the quick version
- 🚂 The Ghan: Adelaide to Darwin through the red centre, Australia’s most famous rail journey.
- 🌏 Indian Pacific: Sydney to Perth coast to coast, including the world’s longest straight stretch of track.
- 🌊 Great Southern: Adelaide to Brisbane along the coast, the newest and least crowded of the three.
- 🍽️ All meals and off-train excursions are typically included in Gold and Platinum class fares.
- 📅 Book well ahead: Popular departures sell out six to twelve months in advance.
- 💰 Not a budget option: Expect fares well into four figures per person for a multi-day journey in a private cabin.
🚂 The Ghan
Named after the Afghan camel drivers who once helped open up the interior, the Ghan runs the length of the continent from Adelaide to Darwin, cutting straight through the red centre over roughly three days.
The highlight for most travellers is the off-train excursion at Alice Springs or Katherine, where you disembark for several hours to explore the surrounding landscape before rejoining the train that evening. Watching the desert shift from red dirt to tropical wetland over the course of the trip is genuinely disorienting in the best way.
🎫 Good to know
- Direction matters less than you think. Both north and southbound journeys include the same excursions, just in reverse order.
- Gold class means a compact cabin. Platinum class has more room and an ensuite, at a significant price jump.
- The bar carriage is worth the walk. Most passengers end up gathering there in the evenings rather than staying in their cabins.
👉 Book a Red Centre Add-On Tour on GetYourGuide →
🌏 Indian Pacific
The Indian Pacific crosses the continent horizontally, from Sydney to Perth, over roughly four days and three nights. It includes the Nullarbor Plain crossing, home to the longest straight stretch of railway track anywhere in the world at 478 kilometres without a single curve.
Off-train excursions typically include a stop in Adelaide, a visit to the historic mining town of Broken Hill, and time in Kalgoorlie, a former gold rush town with some remarkably preserved period architecture.
The sense of scale on this route is hard to overstate. There are stretches where you will not see another building, road, or sign of human activity for hours at a time.
🌊 Great Southern
The newest of the three major routes, the Great Southern runs between Adelaide and Brisbane, tracing much of the southeastern coastline. It is less internationally famous than the Ghan or the Indian Pacific, which in practice means smaller crowds and, at times, better value fares.
Excursions typically take in the Grampians, coastal Victoria, and regional New South Wales, giving a very different flavour to the desert-heavy Ghan route.
🚉 Shorter luxury rail options
If a multi-day cross-country trip is too much of a commitment, a few shorter journeys still deliver a genuine luxury rail experience.
- Puffing Billy, Victoria. A heritage steam train through the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, more nostalgic than luxurious but a genuinely charming half-day trip.
- West Coast Wilderness Railway, Tasmania. A restored mining railway through rainforest between Queenstown and Strahan, with a strong focus on the region’s mining history.
- Savannahlander, Queensland. A slower, more rustic multi-day rail journey through the Atherton Tablelands and outback Queensland.
💡 Planning your trip
A few things worth knowing before you book one of the big three journeys.
- 🗓️ Check the seasonal timetable. Not every route runs year-round; some operate weekly or fortnightly depending on the season.
- 🧳 Pack lighter than usual. Cabin storage is compact, even in the higher classes.
- 🍷 Meals are set-menu, multi-course affairs. If you have dietary requirements, flag them at booking rather than on the day.
- 📶 Signal drops out for long stretches. Treat this as a feature, not a bug — it is one of the few genuinely disconnected experiences left in modern travel.
- 💺 Ask about single supplements. Solo travellers often pay a significant premium for a private cabin, so it is worth budgeting for in advance.
These journeys are not the cheapest or fastest way to cross Australia, and that is rather the point. They are for travellers who want the landscape itself to be the main event, rather than something glimpsed from 30,000 feet on the way to somewhere else.
