Spain by train: Fast, fun and still on track

The following article originally appeared in the Sun-Herald's Travel section.

Fast, fun and still on track

Spain by train.

Taking a high-speed train to the Costa del Sol might save a marriage or two, writes Justin Wastnage.

To read this article in its original form, click here.

I can admit to a touch of schadenfreude as I eased back in my chair, trying to contain my laughter. In a swanky bar in the upscale Spanish resort town of Marbella, a friend was recounting his wife's recent divorce threat.

He had chosen to drive from Madrid to the Costa del Sol, while I had opted for the new Alta Velocidad Espanola (AVE) high-speed Spanish train. With a scarred memory of tortoise-like Australian trains, he'd opted for the hare option of a rental car. Sadly for him, the tortoise has overtaken the hare in Spain, with a whole batch of 330kmh trains on new lines opening in the past few years, replacing the slow, shuddering rolling stock of yesteryear.

Spain is taking its high-speed trains very seriously, with an ambitious plan to overtake France in high-speed track by next year and to build an AVE station near to where nine in 10 Spaniards live by 2020. Lines into France and Portugal are also on the cards.

Iberia, the national airline, has almost pulled out of the Madrid to Barcelona route since the AVE arrived last year, with its ability to complete the 630-kilometre journey in 2 1/2 hours.

Speed aside, there are other things going for the train. My friend had romantic ideas of navigating the fabled land of windmills that Cervantes so famously made of La Mancha in Don Quixote. Instead, he found himself, accompanied by an ever-less understanding wife, driving through landscapes resembling the Western Plains of NSW.

Brown mountains give way every so often to vivid diagonal patches of verdant agriculture marking out a valley or other water source. Utes drive back and forth shuttling farmers between the olive groves and Rioja wineries, their drivers immune from the sun beating down on them.

This is gripping stuff for the first 20 minutes in my air-conditioned train, zipping along silently through the countryside, and an idle distraction from the newspapers for a further hour. In the car, however, it was a different tale. Tedium set in less than 50 kilometres from Madrid, my friend reported, and Spanish commercial radio reception was lost at the 100-kilometre mark. The driver tuned to AM radio; his wife tuned out.

Not that I needed much distraction; a full meal is free in first class. In truth, I have had better Spanish meals and much better Spanish wine but there is still something eminently civilised about having proper crockery to eat from and proper cutlery, rather than the airline-issue plastic.

Favourable comparisons with air travel are easy to make: Madrid's Atocha station is in the CBD and, although not as modern as the city's new airport, is a fascinating place to while away the hours, especially since its grand building has been converted into a tropical greenhouse.

Sadly, the station was the site of Europe's worst terrorist atrocity when an al-Qaeda splinter group killed 191 people in March 2004 using a series of bomb attacks on commuter trains. The memorial is a stark, modernist, glass tubular sculpture connecting the train station with the city life above, as the bomb attacks did.

A consequence is airport-style X-ray scanners are required before boarding, unlike much of the rest of Europe's high-speed network. But security is a small price to pay for a system so punctual that delays of more than five minutes result in an automatic full refund.

It was a good 90 minutes into the journey before the landscape changed in any meaningful way. The red, arid plains of the interior started giving way to the craggy mountains of Andalusia. As the city of Cordova looms into view, I get a glimpse of the Islamic architecture from the Caliphate period of Arab rule over Spain in the middle of the last millennium. The architecturally impressive train station is hidden from most of the old quarter of the city, which is the largest UNESCO-protected World Heritage urban site.

From here, the train continues its rapid descent into the Costa del Sol, a coastline synonymous to many British ears with Gold Coast-style hellraising holidays and cheap resorts. In truth, while there are pockets of the Costa in which high-rise condominiums dominate, much of it remains authentic Andalusian. The director of tourism for the Costa del Sol, Salvador Pendon, says Australians are mainly drawn in by the coast's abundance of well-manicured golf courses and famous whitewashed villages in the mountains.

Our terminus is in the port city of Malaga and to reach the impressive Maria Zambrano station (the philosopher was chosen ahead of Antonio Banderas as Malaga's most famous citizen) we squeeze between the city's two rivers.

Ave means bird in Spanish and as our own AVE swooped down gently on our terminus, we arrived relaxed and refreshed. It took quite a few drinks to make my mate feel the same way about his journey. Threatened with a solo journey on the return, he dropped the rental car off in

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Efforts bearing fruit

The following article originally appeared in TravelWeekly Australia.

Encouraging indigenous tourism is a key priority for the federal government. Justin Wastnage asks will Australians join overseas travellers in experiencing our diverse cultural heritage?

When Queen Elizabeth II
opened the Sydney Opera
House in October 1977 the
controversy that most remember is
the absence of Danish architect
Jørn Utzon, whose genius was
belatedly celebrated in Sydney last
month. Instead, the appearance on
the Opera House’s sails of Ben
Blakeney, a direct descendant of
governor Phillip’s trusted Eora
translator Bennelong, raised
eyebrows from most and ire among
others who saw little place in
honouring the original inhabitants
of what is now Bennelong Point.
Fast forward 30 years and
relationships between indigenous
and non-indigenous Australians
have improved. But tourism is still
in its infancy: roughly one in six
overseas visitors have a tourism
experience involving either
Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Islanders, whereas for domestic
Australian travel this figure is
barely one in a hundred.
For most of the operators
gathered at the first Australian
Indigenous Tourism Conference in
Townsville last month, the figures
for Australian visitors are usually
less than 5%. “I cannot remember
the last Australians we had walking
with us,” says Francis Walker,
manager of Walker Family Tours in
Wujal Wujal, a coastal community
380km north of Cairns.
Yet there are signs of change.
Aden Ridgeway, executive
chairman of Tourism Australia (TA)
Indigenous Tourism Advisory Panel
says polls show that some 60% of
Australians express some interest
in having an aboriginal experience.
This figure has jumped from 40%
thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s Australia
and its Stolen Generations plot.
There is an opportunity this year,
Ridgeway insists, for travel agents
to sell indigenous experiences as
part of the credit crunch trend for
domestic holidays. TA data shows
that domestic indigenous tourism
visitors stay twice as long as other
domestic visitors. They also spend
more per night, making their total
spend three times as high as
traditional domestic trips.
The problem is, according to
Caroline Densley, director of
Diverse Travel, one of the largest
wholesalers of indigenous product,
that very few agents know where
to go to find information.
“There is also reluctance among
what I would describe as ‘my
parents’ generation’ to venture into
aboriginal areas,” she adds.
But agents only sell what is
demanded by their clients says
Michelle Sawtell, domestic product
manager at Flight Centre’s Infinity
Holidays. Infinity and Discover
Australia Holidays (formerly
Discover West Holidays) are among
the mainstream wholesalers adding
more indigenous product to their
domestic packages.
Densley says the current “gentle
sprinkling” of soft experiences like
the popular Anangu Waai! cultural
tours at Uluru will increase as this
generation becomes more
comfortable with aboriginal people.
Perhaps due to a level of
nervousness, domestic overnight
indigenous tourism visitors spend a
greater proportion of their total
expenditure on organised tours and
packages than other domestic
overnight visitors, TA found.
Equally, indigenous tourism visitors
were less likely to stay with friends
and relatives than other domestic
visitors, which gives travel agents a
better stab at commissions, says
Marlene Harding, executive
director of Discover Australia.
Of the experiences themselves,
many have a strong environmental
aspect. “There is a strong
connection between us and the
land and its sustainability,” says
Terrence Coulthard from South
Australian eco-lodge Iga Warta.
There are many cultural tours,
often including traditional
interpretations of the land, its flora
and fauna. Nature projects, like
turtle rescue are also popular.
Yet there has been a paucity of
high-end indigenous product. There
are some exceptions: Alice Springs
Helicopters runs private art tours
and is owned by the Santa Teresa
community. Home Valley Station, a
new luxury ranch modelled on El
Questro, has an on-site technical
and further education (TAFE)
college for indigenous youth.
There are also efforts underway
to address the lack of
professionalism that has blighted
indigenous tourism endeavours in
the past. The Australian Tourism
Export Council (ATEC), the peak
body for the Australian inbound
tourism industry is actively
engaged in making indigenous
operators “export ready”, which
involves having a contingency plan
for the mass mournings, or sorry
time, that follows a death in the
community and can lead to
unplanned tour cancellations.
Similarly, the Northern Territory
government with federal assistance
has established Central Australia
Aboriginal Experience, a marketing
company to interface with
wholesalers. “The aim is to have a
roster of around ten tour operators,
so that some will flourish and go on
their own, but if others die or
disappear for a while, as they often
do, we will guarantee a tour by
having a suitable replacement,”
says Neil Hermès, its director.
In short, there is a lot being
done, but there is a long path to
travel. But just as ‘welcome to
country’ ceremonies are now part of
the Australian cultural landscape,
indigenous tourism should be on
the path to becoming mainstream.

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