Journey Beyond is the business name (together with more than a dozen other related names) of Experience Australia Group Pty Ltd, a private equity-owned company known mainly for operating Australian interstate experiential tourism

trains In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often know ...

(''

The Ghan ''The Ghan'' is an experiential tourism oriented passenger train service that operates between the northern and southern coasts of Australia, through the cities of Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin on the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor. O ...

'', the ''

Indian Pacific The ''Indian Pacific'' is a weekly experiential tourism passenger train service that runs in Australia's east–west rail corridor between Sydney, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and Perth, on the shore of the Indian Ocean – thus, like ...

'', ''

The Overland ''The Overland'' is an Australian passenger train service between the state capitals of Melbourne and Adelaide, a distance of 828 km (515 mi). It first ran in 1887 as the ''Adelaide Express'', known by South Australians as the ''Melb ...

'', and the '' Great Southern''). , the company was a diversified tourism business based in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

, with interests in cruise and air tourism in addition to rail. In January 2022, the United States travel company the Hornblower Group acquired the business from

Quadrant Private Equity Quadrant Private Equity (also simply known as Quadrant) is an Australian private equity investment firm based in Sydney, Australia. The company was founded as Quadrant Capital in 1996 by Chris Hadley. Quadrant hosts multiple investment funds ...

, which had owned it since 2016.

History

Before the 1990s, the government-owned

Australian National Railways Commission The Australian National Railways Commission was an agency of the Government of Australia that was a railway operator between 1975 and 1998. It traded as Australian National Railways (ANR) in its early years, before being rebranded as Australian ...

, trading as Australian National, was the owner and operator of Australia's interstate railways and freight and passenger trains. From 1996 to 1998, Australian National was broken up and in 1997 its interstate passenger trains — ''

'', ''

'' and ''

'' — were sold to Great Southern Rail (GSR), a consortium of

GB Railways GB Railways was the parent company of a number of train operating companies, running the Anglia Railways franchise from January 1997 and launching Hull Trains and GB Railfreight. GB Railways was also involved in the management of the Estonian r ...

Legal & General Legal & General Group plc, commonly known as Legal & General, is a British multinational financial services and asset management company headquartered in London, England. Its products and services include investment management, lifetime mortg ...

Macquarie Bank Macquarie Group Limited () is an Australian global financial services group. Headquartered and listed in Australia (), Macquarie employs more than 17,000 staff in 33 markets, is the world's largest infrastructure asset manager and Australia's ...

RailAmerica RailAmerica, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Florida, was a holding company of a number of short-line railroads and regional railroads in the United States and Canada. In 2007, RailAmerica was acquired by Fortress Investment Group. Before that, it ...

, G13 Pty Ltd and Serco. Included in the sale were 186 items of rolling stock, mainly former Commonwealth Railways stainless steel carriages and the

Adelaide Parklands Terminal Adelaide Parklands Terminal, formerly known as Keswick Terminal, is the interstate passenger railway station in Adelaide, South Australia. It is the only station in the world where passengers can board trains on both north-south and east-west ...

and

Alice Springs railway station Alice Springs railway station is located on the Adelaide–Darwin railway in Alice Springs. History The original Alice Springs station opened in Railway Terrace in 1929, when the Central Australia Railway opened. A freight yard was located on ...

. In 1999, Serco bought all the shares from its consortium partners, becoming the sole owner. GSR owned the passenger car fleet and provided services;

Pacific National Pacific National is one of Australia's largest rail freight businesses. History In February 2002, National Rail Corporation, National Rail's freight operations and rollingstock (owned by the Government of Australia, Federal, Government of New ...

provided the motive power. Between 2008 and 2012, Great Southern Rail also operated ''

The Southern Spirit ''The Southern Spirit'' was a luxury rail cruise train operated by Great Southern Rail in Australia. The train was launched in June 2008 and was planned to travel all over Australia, with the first service originally planned to have run in Nov ...

'' as a luxury cruising train service offering eight luxury rail cruises on a variety of outback Australian train routes. In 2015, Serco sold the business to private equity company Allegro Funds which only a year later sold its assets to

. In 2019, Great Southern Rail was rebranded as ''Journey Beyond Rail Expeditions'' and Great Southern became the name of a train running between Adelaide and Brisbane. Subsequently the brand name reverted to ''Journey Beyond''. Acquisitions since 2015 included Cruise Whitsundays and Rottnest Express, the Eureka Tower Skydeck, Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures, Outback Spirit Tours, Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef and Darwin Harbour Cruises. , it was Australia's largest experiential tourism business. In January 2022, Quadrant Private Equity sold its 13 brands, including the trains, for a reported AU$600 million. The buyer was the Hornblower Group, a cruise and tour company based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, which operates from 125 American cities and whose businesses include

Hornblower Cruises Hornblower Cruises & Events NOW City Experiences is a San Francisco-based charter yacht, dining cruise and ferry service company. History The company began in 1974 in Berkeley, California with two ships. In 1980 the original owner, Ward Proe ...

subscription: the source is only accessible via a paid subscription ("

paywall A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...

").

References

{{Authority control Interstate rail in Australia Passenger railway companies of Australia Trans-Australian Railway Railway companies established in 1997 Australian companies established in 1997 Lachlan Shire