Palembang - Singapore

There a few points that you can leave Indonesia. On of them is on the Islands of Suluwesi into Malasia, the other is by boat from either Medan or Batam islands to Singapore. Batam is a major tourist desination in its on right. Housing as many or more resorts than the isnalnd of Bali.
To get there from palembang you have to take and 8hr ferry trip. This is one of those weak links in the chain. Details are sketchy. I have been unable to find travelogs of the trip or even a photo of the ship.

Palembang 0730| Batam (approx) 1700 S-T-T-S
Price is 255000/305000 Ekonomi/Exekutif

Ferries to Singapore leave every couple of minutes from 0500 until 2030. It only takes 10 mins.

Bandar Lampung - Palembang

2 Trains a day by rail. All Ekonomie Class.
There is a youtube video too.

Tanjungkarang Station to Kertapati Station
2100 | 0600
or
0900|1700

A long trip.

The island has alot of coal mines, the towns are a mix of big new developments and 'new towns' as well as the city you would expect that has a large influx from the country of people seeking new work. Unfortunately that dream of work doesnt always happen.

Jakarta - Bandar Lampung

After a few days exploreing the city

• Ekonomi class train to Merak

KA MERAK JAYA
0835 | 1137

Ferry terminal opposite station

Following this guide.

• An hour to cross the strait by ferry (every 30 mins of so)
  
• 2 hours by bemo to Tanjungkarang
• Need to decide to cath the overnight train (Ekonomi) or stay over and catch the day train.
  

Jakarta

Another big city with a wealth of transport options.
Although the city streets are some of the most crowded on earth.

Visit the abandoned Monorail. Real life meets The Simpsons?

There is also a series of busways under the banner of TransJakarta.
They operate as a series of seperate road corridors crossing the capital, it is a quick and easy method of getting a high density service without having construction costs of something like light rail. I understand that that kind of system does have some drawbacks, the desity of service cannot match that of light rail and unless you modify the buses you can only handle small peak loads.
Brisbane, Australia has a very similar system.

The commuter rail system is famouse for its images of people riding the roof, front side of the trains, although during the day you would not normally see this, peak hour in a city of millions tend to have that effect.

Found another source of information, skyscrapercity, originally about, you guessed it, skyscraper development it now branches out into all things on the development front including transport. It occured to me that I need to work on including more links. As for every post I might visit 30-40 web sites there is alot of quantity missing.

Surabaya - Jakarta

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There are 2 stations in Surabaya.
Surabaya Pasarturi trains head West, it only serves a few trains to Jakarta.
Surabaya Gubeng trains go South, this is the main station.

You can get through Surabaya and go straight into Jakarta on the overnight train.

There are no sleepers on Indonesian trains but they are air conditioned.

You do have a few options for getting to Jakarta, at the upper end of comfort is the KA1/KA3 train, know as the "Argo Anggrek"

KA3 Surabaya 2200 | Jakarta 0600
KA1 Surabaya 0800 | Jakarta 1800

There are a total of 3 night trains plying the way along this route.

KA 35 1920 | 0600 (KA SEMBRANI)
KA 73 1745 | 0515 (KA GUMARANG)

There is some wonderful scenery along the way, alot of it is on the southern side of Java. To see it you need to take the more leisurely trip via Bandung.

KA5A Surabaya Gubeng 0720 | Bandung 1940 (KA ARGO WILIS)
Overnight in Bandung
KA21 1430 | Gambir 1713 (KA ARGO LAWU)

Bandung is a university town and uses a system of minibuses called angkot

One of the good things is that the Indonesian network is predominantly passenger trains, due to the limitations of the rail infrastructure and relative short distances between major centers.

Sydney - Darwin Alt Route

It occured to me there is a couple of other ways to get to the exit port of Darwin.
Countrylink timetables give you some tributaries to follow.
From Sydney head...

South - to Melbourne,

• then take The Overland to Adelaide.
• Not that creative
  

North to Brisbane on one of the XPT's, but be warned these dont have the best reputations amongst Australian train travellers, they look flash in the pictures but drunken parties aren't uncommon.

• You can either go directly to Roma Street Station or change to a bus on the Casino XPT or Grafton XPT service. daily ~15hrs (arr 22:31 bus or 0630 xpt)
  

or to really get funky, well as funky as public tranport goes
North West to Lightning ridge,

dep Sydney 0710 on the daily XPT.
join you bus connection at Dubbo 1430
and finally arrive in Lightning Ridge at 2203

Dep Lightning Rydge with Kynoch Coaches at 0700 --T--F-
arrive in Toowoomba at 2200

Brisbane is ont 1h30m from here by bus

Its probably the only chance you will get to see some rural Australia.


From Brisbane you do what you did in Sydney and catch a multitude of services to an outer point, in this case I would choose Nambour (1h30m) or Cooroy/Noosa (2h), and catch the night time Tilt.

• From Roma Street its on to the Sunlander
  to Townsville.
  S-T-T-- 0900|0900 (then 2 nights stay)
  
• or the much newer Cairns Tilt Train. -M-W-F- 1825|1205 (direct connection)
  
• Then take the Inlander to Mt Isa 1240|0935 +1 S---T--
  
• Then take a greyhound bus to Darwin via Tennant Creek
• Mt Isa 1930 | Tennant Creek 0250 || 0325 | Darwin 1730
  

The lander trains are interesting ones. Some of the 'lander cars are over 50 years old, the original design for the car allows them to be self sufficient for up to a week if they are cut off by flood waters. For this reason they have separate powercars and they used to have multiple dining cars. They also have Australia's only 3 berth sleepers.

Another alternative, you could also go on to Cairns then board the Sea Swift to Thursday Island (dep Fri arr Wed)
then somehow make you way north to Iryan Jaya. From there a Pelni ship can carry you to the island of Java (about 5-7 days transit). Now you would feel funky after that trip.

Banjuwangi - Surabaya

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Overnight in Banjuwangi

KA MUTIARA TIMUR

Banjuwangi 0900| Surabaya 1530 (for the scenery)
Banjuwangi 2235 | Surabaya 0500

First trip on a Kereta Api train.
3 Classes of Travel Eksekutif (Executive) Bisnis (Business) and Ekonomi (Economy) and a 4th if you count Argo trains, although they are essentially Executive only with a couple of extra features.

Depending on who you read Ekonomi ranges between basic to awful. As far as I can tell it consists on un-airconditioned stock with windows you can open and padded leather/vinyl seats. You can get meals from a meal cart, not exactly airline food, but hot rice with local additions in a pot. Actually doesnt sound so bad even if it is 30C & 95% humidity.

Bisnis is similar to Ekonomi, hard to find details.

Eksekutif is AC Coaches, TV, airline style food. All long distance 'Argo' trains consist of this class, typical of what you would find on most railways around the world today.

Denpassar

Bali, nice furniture.

arr 0600

You might need a day or 2 in a resort after the 3 and a half day pelni cruise to Denpassar.

Transport on the island of Bali is by Bemo (Shared Taxi). Aparantly there is a scheduled bus service available at Ubung, Denpasar
To get to the mainland, Java you need to get to Gilmanuk and then by ferry.
At around 120km, thats probably a good half day.
You can buy tickets through to Ketapang at the terminal.
The crossing takes up to 2 hours to Java.
All up I wouldnt expect to arrive until around midday.

12:00

to Java

Until we can get to the island of Java our only option from Kupang is the Pelni Shipping lines.
The details on the website are pretty sketchy and a little hard to use.
Another site, Pelni.com has the 2006 schedule although it is a little hard to decipher the routes.
Some other travellers have a better 2006 timetable.
I did manage to get a timetable eventually out of pelni.co.id, to official site.

Nama Kapal: KM.TATAMAILAU Via:
KUPANG - MAUMERE - BIMA - BENOA/DENPASAR
13:00 | 06:00 +3 Days (approx 1 per week)

It closely matches the 2006 timetable.

Economy is a little scary.

East Timor - Indonesia

Indonesia no longer have a ferry service to Dili. To get to Indonesia you need to catch a bus from Dili, East Timor to Kupang, Indonesia on the South West of the Island. The 300km takes 12 hours and is described by many as:

"quite boring,"

The bus's are known as 'Biskota' or Big Bus, there are smaller modes of transport like the 'microlet' or 'little bus' too, but on those road you want some decent suspension, stick with the biggest one you can find.

Leaving Australia

This is where it gets interesting and a little scary

Getting out of Australia, but still remaining on the ground might prove to be impossible.
There are rumours that the Barge from Darwin to Timor still accepts passenger traffic, other than this the only other route is by 'unofficial' means from Saibai Islands to PNG or by one of the expensive freighters out of Cairns, Darwin or even Perth.

As of June 11 2008:

Perkins operate the MV Arafura Endeavour and CEC Venture, Ro-Ro's out of Darwin, they take 4x4's over for about $110

FREQ: ~1 a week

TIME: Around 12 Hours (700km)

Darwin

Arriving

You need to get a cab unless they have a service bus. The station is around 16km out of town in the Industrial Area.




Darwin

Dont know too much about it.

Quiet little city.

It does have a Bus service, but no more than any other regional center, they are shiny and new.

The Ghan

The Ghan. Not much too it really.



Leave Adelaide 1220 S--W---
Arrive Darwin 1800 --T--F-

Be warned thats 2 and a half days. Although it does run up to 1km in length depending on the season. Also Dec/Jan is not the time to go, a little thing called the Wet Season means most things dont run.

It does have an amazing history, but without a 4WD your really cant explore it. WWII it was a major supply line, 3000km partly by train, partly by 6 wheeled trucks, often on tracks that would be built, washed away and rebuilt in a night.
You can read a book on the way:

The Ghan: The story of the Alice Springs Railway by Basil Fuller

Try the National Railway Museum in Port Adelaide if you get a chance

Or the Adelaide Books in the mall

Adelaide

The Indian Pacific gives you plenty of relaxation time, you cruise out of outer sydney, have dinner on the train and awake the next morning in Broken Hill 0820. From there its another 10 hours looking out the window until you arrive in Adelaide at 1840.

A little inconvenient you miss the Ghan by 6 hours. You have to stay 2 nights in Adelaide. There are some unique sites to see and some even more unique public transport.

• The Adelaide O-Bahn, world longest guided busway.
• The only diesel suburban rail network left in Asutralia
  
• See if you can get one of the jumbo's, they usually run during peak hours only and make an interesting ride. Might be one of the last diesel-hydraulic transmission railcars left too.
  
• All the trains are broad gauge, plenty of shoulder room.
• Sitting up the front of the 3000 class DMU will give you a driver side view of the road.
• The trip up to Belair and back is another picturesque ride.
• The Glenelg tram is interesting, don't know how often the old H class trams run, but catch one, their nearly 80 years old.
  

Start...

Sydney Terminal, as good a place as any to start to plan to go half way around the globe by public transport.

From here to get to the next bit you need to get to Darwin. Now the straight forward way would be to Catch the Indian Pacific to Adelaide and then The Ghan to Darwin, but why missout on all that variety.

You can travel a long way by public transport in NSW but you do need to draw a line. Yes you could get to Broken Hill by public transport I guess, but you can only endure so much 'Travel'. You have alot of factors to consider in setting an outer limit of endurance and risk with any travel plans. Why not start out with something different, book your bags in at Central and head west on Sydney's public Transport.

The weakest link in the plan is the IP, for that you need to work backwards from your critical last connection time. You do eventually need to catch up with the IP. Travel plans should consider these last minute stops:

Mon,Tue           Arr   Dep
Sydney    00:00 14:55 14:55
Lithgow   03:19 18:09 18:09
Bathurst  04:41 19:44 19:44
Blayney   05:45 20:51 20:51
Orange    06:14 21:25 21:25
Parkes    09:13 23:23 23:23

The sydney metropolitan bus network extends to penrith in the west, from there you can get Cityrail trains as far as Lithgow and CountryLink Bus/Rail travel beyond here. The countrylink Western Timetable doesnt integrate the Indian Pacific you you need to do some work.

You can get a morning Explorer service and spend the day at Parkes

• Sydney 0620 | Parkes 12:55 || 23:23 (no thanks)

Orange presents a problem, Orange and Orange East Fork are not the same station, east fork is about 2km from the middle of town. You do get to spend 4 hours there but it will be dark.

• Lithgow 15:20 | Orange 17:00 || 21:25 (4h25)

A number of buses can get you to Bathurst but Blaney only allows a 4 min window to catch the IP. Bathurst is probably as far as you want to go before bunking down on the IP for the night

• Lithgow 15:20 | Bathurst 16:15 || 19:44 (3h15)

Given the Blue Mountains end at Lithgow you may want to just fall back to boarding here

• Lithgow 18:09

Back from here you can enjoy the Blue Mountains via Cityrail's Blue Mountain Line, might be able to go in and out of scheduled services with the Blue Mountain Bus Company although the train will give a better view. A stop at Katoomba or the Zig Zag is a good call.

Metropolitain Sydney gives you plenty of Public Transport marvels, you could spends days here and never catch the same service twice.

The ferry is only around 1km from the station across the middle of town.

Dep Parramatta station 12:27/14:54 | arr Lithgow 14:25/17:12 || 18:09 join the IP

Get the Ferry to Paramatta from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour

• Dep Circular Quay 0900/1000/1100/1230 +60 mins later into Parramatta
• or get lost on the myriad of buses running from Sydney via whoopwhoop to Parramatta, allow 2 hours
  

0800 Start out leave your bags for the IP at Central and take the Train to Circular Quay

• This is as close as Australia gets to a Metro, the City Circle Line
  

• or Tram to Darling Harbour

• Sydney lost its trams in the 50's; the Metro Light Rail isnt really a metro and by light rail standards doesn't use light rail, its the full 50kg/m
• With a bit of creativity you can also jump on the Monorail
  

After reading this and the next post I realised that there is another way to get to Darwin, thats a little more interesting...
See later entry Sydney - Darwin Alt Route

Planning this out is easier if you use tools like Gantt charts or timespace graphs. Have got my style for this down yet. Look for the bolds, there the critical bits.

Roughly...

A picture might help...

Not that its a pretty picture but you get the idea.

Starting Point

Most of the blogs, books and even the planes fly from London to Sydney. Going the other way is just that little bit different.

Where did it start?
My mum used to tell me stories about how she travelled from Cape Town to London with 4 kids in tow meeting princes and diplomats along the way.
My dad was a merchant sailor and took us from Plymouth to Sydney by way of the Suez Canal, my earliest memory is of a toy truck rolling on a deck, Im told that was during a force 12 gale in the mid-atlantic. Whilst everyone had their life jackets on waiting to flip because we couldnt get enough balast on board with no cargo, I laughed and played the whole time.
I never have money to travel.
I went to uni to study town planning but my real goal was to get into transportation planning, never worked out thou.

My first lecturer, Prof Colin Taylor published:
Great Non-Journeys of Australia

and I more recently been fascinated by
The Man in Seat 61


More recent literature...
Never read it but saving to buy a copy:
Wrong Way Home: Peter Moore

he's gone around the world too

Having seen a contiki tour im not too sure about the OzBUS