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.