By The Bug’s consumer rights expert Kav. E. Atemptor

A self-confessed train tragic has begun legal action after being “cruelly and maliciously misled” into believing the world-famous Ghan passenger train travelled right beside Ululu.

Widowed grandmother of two Betty-Anne Webster of Orange, NSW, late last month spent close to $5500 for a single, Gold, berth on a Ghan Adelaide to Darwin service next April after seeing a full-page advertisement on the back of the Traveller section of the 20 August 2022 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald (pictured at top).

“I guess it’s turned out I’m the April fool,” said Mrs Webster, 78, who admits she’s not in the best of health.

“Two of the most pressing things on my bucket list are to travel on the Ghan – my late husband Ern was as big a train tragic as I am – and to see Ayers Rock – sorry, Uluru – before I go.

“My lawyers think it’s perfectly reasonable on my part to have looked at that advertisement and formed the honest opinion that the Ghan travels close enough to Uluru to take some lovely pictures,” Mrs Webster said.

“More than that, I reasonably expected there would be an opportunity to ‘step down’ as these train people say, hop on some buses and walk around this iconic Australian landform if only for a wee while.

“My lawyers think I’ve been cruelly and maliciously mislead, especially as I now know through them that the rail line between Adelaide and Darwin runs many, many kilometres east of Uluru.

“How the fuck am I going to see Uluru from there, if you’ll pardon the French?

“And my lawyers have now found out that, yes, I can take a fixed-wing tourist flight from Alice Springs but that only shows me Alice and its environs.

“And no wonder, seeing fucking Alice Springs is about 341km from Uluru by air and it takes about 50 minutes’ flight time one way.

“There are limited seats at $380 that I don’t fucking have and even then I’d have to forgo the off-train excursions at the Alice I’ve already paid for.”

As this story was being uploaded to The Bug’s website, the company that runs The Ghan had not responded to questions we hadn’t bothered to send them.