White elephant or white knight?

Just before the cricket roadshow moved from Darwin to Cairns, there was a chance to take in some of the sights of the Northern Territory. And more people might get the chance to savour that scenery when the railway finally arrives in Darwin, early next year.

It's long been a dream of Territorians to be linked with the rest of Australia by rail. It was tried in the 1920s, but the money ran out after the railway had made it down from Darwin at the top to Katherine, about 200 miles south. Remnants of that line, which was taken up a few years ago, still remain - and some of the infrastructure is being used for the new railway all the way up from Alice Springs. They did save some money when one 1920s bridge, which was due for demolition, turned out to need only six new rivets to make it safe to use, even given today's more stringent building regulations.

The new railway is nudging the outskirts of Darwin already, and the final bits of track will soon be down. Freight services will start then, while the first passenger service is planned for February 2003, with celebrity crocodile-baiter Steve "Crikey!" Irwin as the flagwaver.

To start with there will be five weekly freight services, while once a week the famous Ghan passenger train, which usually plies between Adelaide and Alice, will make the long trip to Darwin as well. Perversely the passenger services won't quite reach Darwin itself but branch off and terminate in the nearby satellite town of Palmerston. Meanwhile the freight trains will head straight for Darwin's harbour wharves.

The line might be just about dead straight, but it's still costing a fortune. For a start the builders have had to install around 900 level crossings, as well as make thousands of concrete sleepers (NT's voracious termites would quickly munch their way through traditional wooden ones). Some have called it the biggest white elephant in Australia's history, but Darwinites are looking to forward to it nonetheless. "We'll be lining the tracks for the first train up here," said one. "There will be barbecues for miles and miles."

No doubt that's because they will really feel part of Australia when they're joined to the rest of it by that thin metal line? "No, it's because we're hoping our food will be cheaper," I was told. "It sounds bizarre but almost all the food in our shops is brought in by road from Sydney or Brisbane, which means it's very expensive. We grow some stuff here but a lot of it is exported - for example we grow mangoes down the road but they are sent away, and fresh ones can cost $A8 each in town. It's crazy - and we're hoping the trains will change all that."

Meanwhile down in Katherine they didn't want the town's tranquillity disturbed by all those trains - two a day at first - and insisted that the new station was sited five miles out of town. The old line snaked right through the middle, and visitors to the beautiful Katherine Gorge nearby are usually also shown the old railway bridge over the river - it stands high above the normal riverbed, but was covered by 21-metre floods in the wet season a few years ago.

But whether the railway turns out to be a white elephant or the white knight for Darwin's shoppers, it should certainly bring more people in to the Top End, with its crocodile parks and Kakadu tours. In the end tourism might be the biggest winner of them all, apart from the lucky local mango-munchers.