Featuring some of Australia's most iconic rail journeys, Heading South celebrates the unique joys of train travel and is the perfect book for the armchair traveller.

Freelance travel writer and Lonely Planet guidebook contributor Tim Richards decides to shake up his life by taking an epic rail journey across Australia. Jumping aboard iconic trains like the Indian Pacific, Overland and Spirit of Queensland, he covers over 7,000 kilometres, from the tropics to the desert and from big cities to ghost towns. Tim's journey is one of classic travel highs and lows- floods, cancellations, extraordinary landscapes and forays into personal and public histories - as well as the steady joy of random strangers encountered along the way.