It really wasn't the most comfortable night's sleep we have ever had as, although the seats recline quite a long way back, there are no foot rests and the way the seats are shaped mean you can't lay on your side very easily or move about. We managed to nap on and off throughout the night but really didn't feel particularly refreshed when the lights turned on at 9am!
 
The second day passed much like the first with views of the Nullabor Plains whizzing past the window . We tried to move about a bit to stretch our legs but the only options were the main carriage or the dining carriage so it wasn't a very big walk about! At about 1:30pm we pulled into a town called Cook to refuel and fill up the water tanks again! We were allowed to get off the train and have a look about but we were warned there really wasn't a lot to look at! Up until a few years ago, Cook had a population of 40. It also had a fully functioning school, swimming pool, basketball court and recreation area. That all changed though when the authorities changed the train routes and there was no longer enough work to sustain that many people. Almost over night, the school closed and families moved out of the town leaving just one family in charge of servicing the remaining trains. This means the current population of Cook is 5 people! Husband and wife, their daughter, her husband and their daughter! The school is an unstable, run down, shell of a building, so the daughter has to be educated via the Internet. For some reason they have filled in the swimming pool with mud and let the basketball court & recreational area go to rack and ruin so they have no 'fun' areas just dusty sandy ground that goes on for miles?! Madness!!!!! This is by far the lowest populated place we have visited and the eeriest ghost town we've seen!
 
The next part of our journey felt the longest as, despite putting our clocks forward another hour and a half to bring us in line with South Australian time, it was only 3:30pm and this was our last stop now until we reached Adelaide at 7:20am!! We tried to have a bit of a snooze, I managed to finish my book, we wrote more blog entries and went for dinner in the dining car which all passed a lot of the time but it was still dragging on a fair bit! We were treated to a pretty spectacular sunset at about 7:30pm then when the lights went off, a few hours later, we decided to try and get some sleep. Matt really struggled to get to sleep and every time I woke up he seemed to be sat staring into space listening to his music but eventually he did manage to nod off for a little bit and by the time we woke up and the lights came back on we were just about pulling into Adelaide station where we knew Simon was waiting for us.
 
Travelling on The Indian Pacific was certainly a memorable experience and I'm really glad we decided to do it but it was definitely far more difficult and uncomfortable than I had anticipated and now we've ticked off 'travel by train' on our 'Things to do in Oz' list, I think we'll be sticking to flights and the odd car journey from now on!