I'm setting off on the greatest journey of my life.
Let's do this!
To travel around the globe by train.
No idea what platform we're going from!
I'll be riding some of the most spectacular rail routes on Earth.
On the fastest, steepest,
and most luxurious trains.
Passing through some of the world's most famous places...
The Eiffel Tower.
Grand Central Station.
There it is. Mount Fuji.
..and beyond,
to parts of the planet I never knew existed...
We're totally isolated.
..to immerse myself...
This isn't for anything, this is just what people do on a Sunday.
..in the weird,
the wild...
Hah!
..and the wonderful.
This is unlike anything I've ever done before.
After a marathon flight, I've made it to the land down under,
Australia.
I'm in Sydney, the starting point for the XPT long-distance
train which is going to take me nearly 600 miles north.
And quite frankly, if you've got a TV production company
paying for your railway ticket in a country as big as Australia, you're
going to want to see something a bit different, aren't you?
Which is why I'm going to head off the beaten track
and meet real Aussies on their own turf.
This really is an insanely big country. So I'm not mucking about.
I'll blast up the east coast quickly and efficiently,
then dart inland to the Aussie bush before hurtling all the way
up to the reef in the far north.
So, I've got no time to waste in Sydney
but before my epic journey, there's a view I want you to see.
I lived and worked in Sydney for a while
and it's always held a special place in my heart.
It's only by air you can really take in the complexity of its shape,
how the water and the city constantly interact.
I know Sydney pretty well.
But the vast majority of Australia's still a mystery to me
and to get to the remote places I've always wanted to visit,
I've got to cover a hell of a lot of miles quickly.
So I'm hitting the rails.
I'm getting on the XPT which will take me
on the first leg of the two-part 18 hour trip.
I want to go and check out small town Australia.
So I'm heading north from New South Wales to Queensland.
This Interstate route is part of a network of 25,000 miles
of tracks, crisscrossing this stonkingly huge country.
This north coast line was completed in 1932 and ends up in Brisbane.
But I haven't come here to see the big cities,
so I'm leaping across the platform to change
trains for the second leg of my journey out west.
I just so love the design of these old trains.
Stainless steel and all these snazzy colours.
Evening.
This little beauty will take me four hours west,
or as it's known here, out Bush.
In the 19th century, it used to be called the Western Mail
but now it's got a snazzy modern name, the Westlander.
I'm retracing the steps of the country's earliest pioneers.
And I've arrived at the small town of Millmerrin at the edge
of the Outback.
This is the Camp Oven Festival. It's a two-day event
dedicated to the celebration of a cast-iron cooking pot.
This is a bit like 5,000 people having a festival in Maidstone, Kent
to celebrate the frying pan.
Thousands come from all over the country to pay homage to this rather
humble camping accessory and quite frankly, I'm fascinated to know why.
Ned. Are these...? G'day! G'day, Tony. G'day!
Are these camp ovens?
They're the genuine camp oven.
Ned Winter is a former drover who used to herd
sheep across the Outback and cooked with the camp oven on his long
and remote journeys.
He helped dream up the festival to honour this piece of Aussie
rural heritage. Tell me about them historically.
People in the 19th century,
they would come over here from England, they would buy one
or two of these in the big town and then head off into the Outback.
That's right.
So these were pretty important, weren't they? They were important.
This was the only way of cooking their food, you know.
What sort of things did people used to cook in them?
Well, you could cook a beautiful roast dinner, a curry, a stew,
your dampers. Practically everything.
To experience bush life to the full, Ned's getting me cooking.
And I'm starting with a traditional Aussie bush bread called a damper.
The main thing is the correct measurements.
You're just tipping it in, mate. That's the right amount.
And the salt. Yeah. Correct measurements.
Mix the flour in. Go on, I'll do that! All in. Yeah, you do it.
Yeah. Now, I'm going to ask one of these blokes here, why would
I use this hand to mix the damper? Let's ask the sound guy.
Ed. Come here.
It's got nothing to do with the hand
you use when you go to the toilet, has it? No. No.
That says more about you than it does about the question.
So what's the answer?
I'm right-handed. Oh!
To finish the damper, Ned adds water and then it goes into the camp oven.
Lid goes on.
And in a TV 25 minutes later... Oh, look at that!
That's not bad, is it? Looks all right to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Not quite... Oh-ah-ah-ah!
That is the fair dinkum Aussie damper.
With my damper so lovingly made, is it time to eat it?
No, it's not.
This is the Outback.
For some reason, which I don't quite understand,
when you've baked your damper here, you throw it as far as you can.
CROWD GASPS
If I attempt to do it, I'll be covered in humiliation.
The Aussie's love of sport means they'll turn
practically anything into one.
All the way from London, England, with skills completely
untried in this competition here,
how d'you think you're gonna go, Tony? I think I'll probably win.
CROWD LAUGHS
I love your confidence. Oh, come on!
Come on! That's it!
CROWD CHANT TONY'S NAME
Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to tell you that the tin castles
will no longer be functioning for the rest of the day.
That's it for the whole tournament.
People come from all over Australia to this event.
It's run by locals and the profits go to local organisations
and, of course, it's keeping local traditions alive.
There's an integrity about it that I really like.
I think one day I'll come back here.
Coming up...
My journey continues, as I head to the back of beyond
where I try my luck as a farm hand...
Oi, not so far - not so far!
..walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs...
That's a massive footprint!
..and relax outback-style.
Oh...
Oh!
I'm on yet another train.
This time, the Spirit of the Outback,
which will take me on a 24-hour journey deep into the Aussie bush.
I thought this would be a really rickety, old-fashioned train.
It's 37 years old, but they've done it out really nicely.
I love this bed.
And look outside.
Isn't this nice?
The colours are beautiful.
This sort of dusty pink here,
and I suppose you'd call that burgundy down there, wouldn't you?
But the point is it's all curves.
Normally, any train you go in, you walk down the carriage
and it's dead straight.
But this makes it feel like something special,
like I'm at the Savoy.
But unlike the Savoy, you don't need a black suit
and tie to come in here.
This is the Shearers Rest.
But I don't think many of you are shearers, are you?
Inland train routes like the Central Western Line helped to
open up the inner reaches of Australia in the 1800s.
In fact, this town of Longreach I'm heading to didn't exist
until the decision was made to extend the line to this point.
Oh, thank you!
Enjoy. Oh, look at this.
Better than a ham sandwich, isn't it?
And before you destroy it, I just need a quick little close-up.
The thing about crews is that they're obsessed with the close-up.
A tiny bit lower down, nearer the table - that's great.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a close-up of a scone.
OK?
Yeah, any time.
Inhospitable landscape,
total flipping luxury.
CAMERAMAN LAUGHS
A rather considerable time later, I arrive at Longreach.
But I still need to head even further out bush.
Way, way out.
Look at this earth.
Dry as a bone.
You'd think that farmers would be crazy to farm here, wouldn't you?
But they've got one thing going for them.
They've got a hell of a lot of space!
At 15,000 acres, Shandonvale farm definitely has space to spare.
And because a trip to the outback wouldn't be complete without
experiencing farm life, I'm here to get my hands dirty.
Next to me is Tim, the farm's heli pilot.
The property's so vast it used to take early settlers days to
locate and move animals around.
Now with helicopters, the herds can be found in hours.
Camels were introduced to Australia in the 1840s,
to help explore Australia's red centre.
There are now over one million running wild.
Well, ask an Aussie silly question, I suppose.
The camels are used to organically control weeds,
so the farm doesn't spray pesticide,
and every six weeks they need to be moved to a different paddock,
which on a farm this size is an epic task.
So we're joined by the farm owner, Deon,
and with a bike, buggy and heli, we get to work.
All right, let's see if we can get around a bit.
The wild camel population has become so large that Australia now
exports its camels to Saudi Arabia.
Oi, not so far - not so far!
Oi, come on, sunshine.
Come on.
Now, come on.
I don't like that one with the frothy face!
CAMELS GROWL
Well, that was really exhilarating.
I actually felt that quite a lot of the time I actually got
control of the herd.
And working with the helicopter and the bike as well.
I liked that!
This place is... It's a lot of property, isn't it?
Oh, there's enough room to move, yeah.
Can't hear your neighbour pissing on the tree next door. No.
So it's just you and your wife?
Yeah, just me and Lane, yeah.
Do you ever get lonely?
Ah, no. No, not nowadays.
Probably the first six or seven years, yeah, I lived by myself,
and that was, you know, it's not really good for you
when you're, you know, 17 or 18 and you're living by yourself.
You don't have too much interaction with others.
So you're all solitary?
Yeah. A little bit crazy, yeah.
This famously dry country is currently even drier,
as it experiences one of the worst droughts in its history.
How long has this drought been going on for?
Erm, we're in our seventh or sixth year.
You seem very laid-back about the fact that you're in the middle
of a six-year drought.
You've just got to learn to live with it.
We de-stocked all our cattle and then we went into sheep,
Dorper sheep, you know, adapted to this climate.
So we're sort of just running on the bare minimum, and...
And that's what you always do when you get a drought -
you contract all your stock?
Yes, you need to try and keep a core, so when it does rain
you can take advantage of it, yeah.
I'm riding out to feed the farm's sheep,
with Deon and his wife Lane.
If there's a switch to be pulled, I'll pull it.
Can you reach?
Shut up! THEY LAUGH
So just turn that onto on.
OK.
The drought means the land can't currently produce enough
grass, so the sheep need to feed twice daily.
So you just walk along, make sure no-one gets run over.
And it's not just around Longreach that's feeling the drought.
Over 58% of the state of Queensland is drought declared.
It's very, very dusty, but really the most important thing is to
jog along by the side of the little old truck, because some
of the sheep are so daft that they would go under and get squashed.
But none of them did, so job well done.
Oh, this is nice.
I can't tell you how far away from everywhere else this place is.
I had to drive mile after mile after mile down a dusty road.
But this is cute alert. Ready?
Come on.
Look at that!
Aren't you gorgeous?
Are you going to sit down for me?
Sit down for me.
There's a good girl.
This joey has lost its mother, and is being hand-raised by
Deon and Lane.
I don't know if this will work, but...
Hey, do you want to go back in?
Sweetheart?
Sweetheart, this way!
Come on, don't eat the sound man.
Don't eat the sound man.
Here you go. Come on.
This is your home.
Yeah.
All right, go on, put this leg away!
There you are. I'll put you back now.
It was worth the travelling round the world just to do that.
Say goodbye?
After a day experiencing working farm life, Deon's arranged
for me to end my day in true Aussie style - with a cold glass of beer.
Oh.
HE SIGHS
..and a view that really can't be beaten.
Oh...
You don't get this at the London Planetarium.
Because this whole area is so unbelievably vast,
I'm cheating a bit.
I'm leaving the railway track,
and I'm getting onto this dirt track and a 4x4.
I'm heading further north, above the Tropic of Capricorn, to Winton.
This place is so bleak, so flat, so uninspiring.
When you're driving through it, it just does your head in.
You would never think that in a place like this you'd find
something which could completely turn our whole understanding of
prehistory Australia on its head.
But that's precisely what happened to Dave.
Dave!
Farmer Dave Elliott's life changed when he discovered
a rather special bone.
That's a heck of a bone, isn't it?
That is a heck of a bone. It's your pride and joy, isn't it?
It's a toe.
It's just a little toe.
A little toe from a...?
Off a sauropod dinosaur, yeah.
Sauropod. Yeah, one of the small toes on his back foot.
How did you know straight away that that was a dinosaur bone?
Oh, driving along on the bike, going pretty fast,
and went to dodge a pile of rocks, and I just looked and said,
"I'll just duck back and have a look at that,"
and I'd found lots of pieces of bits of dinosaurs, you know,
but I'd never found one that was a new species that was
a really significant dinosaur, and in 2005 I found this.
Did you say that it's a new species?
It is. It was described in 2008.
It was named Savannasaurus elliottorum.
Elliottorum - well done, mate! Yeah, there you go.
Not many people have a dinosaur named after them.
It's all right. It loosely translates to "the Elliott family's
"lizard of the grasslands."
And Dave's bone isn't the only evidence of sauropod activity
unearthed in the Winton area.
What, there?!
That's a massive footprint! Like an enormous camel.
That's the front foot of a sauropod.
When they put their front foot down, they drive it forward.
You see the big bowls?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look up ahead.
So this would've been mud there, yeah.
During the Late Cretaceous period, this whole area was rainforest.
And these trackways were formed when sauropods -
huge plant eating dinosaurs -
walked through soft sediment leaving
an impression, which over millions of years hardened into rock.
This is absolutely massive, isn't it?
That's 900mm long.
And they're going in this direction?
Yeah, they're walking that way, so you're looking at a 3.3m stride.
How big do you reckon these boys would've been?
This bloke here would've been 18m long.
The earth would've shaken, wouldn't it?
Voomph!
The sauropods roamed these lands 100 million years ago.
Just a minute, just a minute.
Are these here... Yep.
Are these little footprints too?
They're little chicken-sized dinosaurs. Ah.
They're not little versions of this one? They're a different sort?
Different sort, yeah.
How many different kinds of dinosaur?
Three.
There's the little chicken-sized coelurosaurs,
the little meat-eaters.
There are ornithopods, which are a bit bigger,
so, like, smaller than an emu, about the size of a plain turkey.
And then you've got the size of the sauropods.
And is it usual to see all three kinds of dinosaurs
going along together?
No, no, it's very, very rare, actually, to see all three sorts of
tracks together in the same trackway,
and we have got them on this site.
So you've found something really unusual?
Well, it looks like we have.
Coming up...
I head to lush climes of the north,
and take the plunge in one of the wonders of the world...
It's like something out of Apocalypse Now down there.
..have a brief encounter with a rather special lady...
Oh, Margaret, you don't like that, do you?
..and I roll with the Far North's answer to Crocodile Dundee...
Oh, my, look, I can see its... It's a big 'un!
My goodness me!
I'm continuing on my journey in Australia.
My train is now making its way north up the coast of Queensland.
Over 85% of Australians live within 30 miles of the country's coastline.
The Spirit of Queensland runs between Brisbane
and Cairns five times a week.
This tilt train was introduced in 2013,
and already has over 1.5 million miles under its belt.
And after 31 hours, my train has finally arrived into Cairns
in Far North Queensland.
Cairns is the biggest city in the Far North,
and it's also the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.
Over there is Fitzroy Island.
It's a beautiful tropical paradise.
Turquoise water, lush green forest.
Perfect.
Except below the surface things aren't quite what they seem.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the world.
Stretching for 1,600 miles, it's larger than the entire UK,
and can be seen from space.
But rises in water temperatures are causing damage, and instead of the
vibrant hues we're used to seeing, now parts of it look like this.
That's horrible, that white coral, isn't it?
It's like something out of Apocalypse Now down there.
Oh, it's horrible. It's just white stuff.
The corals were just melting off the rocks.
Gary lives and dives here with his son Kai,
and has seen first-hand the changes to the reef over the years.
So explain to me what I was seeing.
So the piece of coral you had there, that was a dead piece of coral.
That would've died in the 2017 bleaching event.
But what is a bleaching event?
There's a little microscopic algae that lives inside the coral
that gives it its colour.
So during a bleaching event, when the water gets too hot the coral
expels this algae, and it goes a bleach-white.
Well, the chances are it will die.
Though some coral will regrow naturally,
the reef hasn't had time to recover.
And what have you got there, Kai?
Oh, I've got a piece of coral.
Ah. What did it feel like the first time that you were snorkelling
and you saw coral like this?
Very, very sad.
He sat on the edge of the water there, crying,
and was very upset after seeing it.
So it kind of spurred me on more.
Gary's part of a group of local volunteers who are working to
give the reef a helping hand to recover and regrow.
They've been taking healthy coral, cutting it into smaller pieces
and growing them in the nursery.
It's a technique similar to taking a cutting from a plant to grow
a new one.
It's a delicate process, and one that can only be done
with a permit from the Marine Park Authority.
It's fascinating.
It looks like an apple tree in an orchard that's been
half harvested, so there are some branches with no apples on them
and others with huge apples on.
It's the same here except that it's coral.
By using corals that have already survived a bleaching event,
the new growths are more likely to be resilient to future bleaching.
And keeping them closer to the surface, where they get more
access to sunlight and nutrients, helps them grow faster.
They grow maybe seven-eight times quicker.
Because they're not fighting off algae, pests, other corals,
all their energy goes into growing.
So when you've got one of these little trees of coral,
and it looks like it's going to be OK, what do you do with it?
After the six to nine months, we plant them back to the reef.
Once the coral is taken to the reef, it's attached to the bedrock
where it'll continue to keep growing as it would naturally.
From one little piece we'll put out thousands of corals,
from that one little piece.
That's what we've done with a 10-tree nursery,
so you can imagine what we can do with 100 trees.
The reef is resilient, if it has the time.
But the thing now is that we don't have the time -
we don't have 10 years till another bleaching event.
They're talking about it maybe bleaching again this year.
If it bleaches again this year while it's in this state,
we're in an awful way, you know?
We need to get more of these out there. What we're doing here,
this isn't going to save the Great Barrier Reef.
But it's making a positive... Contribution.
These coral trees, they started apparently about that big.
Well, some of them are zonking now.
And you can imagine that if the whole of this area was full of these
trees, you'd be producing coral that would make a significant difference.
And as night falls in Cairns, we're confronted with
a very different sort of wildlife.
Come on in, lads.
So it's in here. Yeah.
And... So what happened - you just came in to look at the boat?
Yeah, well, I'd been fishing yesterday.
I hooked the battery up to charge. Yeah.
And, yeah, there was... And what?!
There was a bloody big snake sitting in it.
Local snake catcher Matt Hagan has been called out by
Phil and Lisa to help with their unwelcome house guest.
It might be helpful if you can be my bagman, Tony.
The snake is going to go in here.
Under that front hatch, Matt... Yeah.
Oh, my, look, I can see it. I can see it. Can you...
Sam, can you see it?
There are 170 different kinds of snake in Australia.
Its head isn't essing up straight away,
so it's not really in a strike position.
Matt handles any and all snakes,
and Australia has 17 of the 20 most venomous in the world.
SNAKE HISSES
Oh, it is... It's a really... It's a big 'un!
My goodness me!
It's pretty, though.
It's not so pretty from here!
Oh...
Shouldn't you be worried more about its head?
Yeah, I'm trying to be as... Oh, God, he's coming towards me!
..kind to it as I can.
That's a pretty decent sized carpet python to be living in your boat.
Luckily, this guy is a python, so not venomous.
But it could still give Matt, or me, a mighty big bite.
Whoa!
His tongue popped out again!
THEY LAUGH
It feels like I'm frying a very heavy pancake.
Feeling down there, it may be getting ready to lay some eggs.
Do you think that's why she might have found this nice little
place to tuck away?
Very possibly. You could've had little small snakes.
Yeah, a whole family. Yeah.
That would've been wonderful. That'd be lovely.
It's a lovely garden.
After driving out of town, Matt must now delicately try
and return the snake to the wild.
Oh, she's a heavy girl, isn't she? There we go.
What do you do when you're not catching snakes?
I spend the daytime farming crocodiles.
So a nice, easy life?
That's right.
That'll do. Okey doke.
It's a tricky process because Matt can't see where the snake's
positioned in the bag.
I'll step away from this a bit, I think.
We've driven up a long, windy road to the top of this hill.
You can probably see the lights of Cairns over there,
but here is the beginning of the tropical rainforest
so we're going to free her in there...
Come on. Sorry to mess you about.
SNAKE HISSES
Oh!
She is so beautiful, isn't she?
She is.
So hopefully she can lay her eggs in the rainforest
instead of the bow of the boat.
There.
Shall we go home?
Job done. Yeah. Time for a beer!
Morning!
I'm carrying on my travels by heading north
into the mountains on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.
It might not have the prettiest starting point,
but apparently where we're going is something else.
I love the way this carriage is made. It's about 80 years old.
And look at the way the seats are configured.
It reminds me of my mum's lounge at Christmas,
when all the chairs were brought in for the uncles and aunties.
And the fabric is lovely! Look at that.
The Kuranda railway line was originally built
to transport supplies to the mines in the Atherton Tablelands,
and the trains would return to the ports in Cairns laden with tin.
Horseshoe Bend, this is called. It's fairly obvious why.
And it was the building of this transport link that led to
Cairns becoming the largest town in the far north.
This railway was built at the end of the 19th century.
It was a massive engineering project -
37 bridges, 15 tunnels,
took five years to build.
When it was finished, the freight line also began taking
passengers, and quickly gained a reputation for its stunning views.
It's remained a tourist train ever since.
Oh, wow, isn't this incredible?
My travels in Australia have brought me to the far north of Queensland.
A bit of planting like this at Birmingham New Street
wouldn't go amiss, would it?
Kuranda is in the heart of rain forest country,
and I want to find out more about these natural wonders,
so I'm heading to one of the world's most spectacular.
I'm in the Daintree National Park.
Apparently,
there are more different species in 100 square metres of this park
than there are in the whole of North America.
That's pretty amazing, isn't it?
And I'm going to meet a man who knows all about this forest.
Juan, hi, mate. Hey, Tony.
How are you today, mate? All right.
That's one heck of a tree, isn't it?
Yeah, we call it "jarangal". This is a special place.
The trees, they're home to spirits, to ghosts. To ghosts?
To ghosts. So, yeah, people, you know,
if their spiritual healers were doing any spiritual work,
they'd come to the old people and these big trees
and talk to the old people.
Juan lives in the rain forest and is part of the Gugu-Yalanji mob,
the traditional custodians of this area.
Why have you got all this bark here?
I'm going to give you a little traditional welcome to country here.
And this is to clear any bad sort of energy that's following you around.
All the city rubbish... That's right.
..that I carry about inside me. That's right.
I see you've got an ancient indigenous cigarette lighter there.
That's it, mate. Yeah, this is the way to go. It saves a lot of time.
The smoke is good to breathe in, to clear any bad energy. Yeah.
JUAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
The welcome to country ceremony gets performed when you enter
traditional land.
It's quite nice, this sort of ceremony, isn't it?
It does make you feel that it's a special thing to do.
Well, it is a special thing. It's quite important, you know?
It's always a good thing to do,
just to, you know, be respectful to the spirits of land.
The visitor vows to respect the land and inhabitants
while the traditional custodians
honour and protect you on your visit.
So the whole crew's got to do it, too, right? Yeah.
Get the director in as well.
He needs quite a lot, he's the biggest by far.
Juan wants other people to learn about indigenous culture,
so he educates visitors about the flora and fauna and history
of the region.
So, at the base of the tree, down here, Tony,
if you have a look, you'll see these little red bulbs.
If you give these little bulbs a squeeze,
you'll get this gel coming out,
and that gel is really good for mozzie bites.
It'll take the itching and the swelling out.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it really is sticky, isn't it?
It's like something you'd squeeze out of a tube. Yeah.
We're part of this country.
We don't own it, we don't believe we are rulers of it.
We're part of it. What's your tribe, or your mob?
Our mob, yeah. We call ourselves the Gugu-Yalanji.
And how many of you live around here?
Around...200 to 300 people.
Presumably, you got hammered by us lot when we arrived. Yeah.
Yeah, before European arrival, the local area here,
you would have been close to 1,000 people.
And when settlers came, they wanted the resources.
And we tried to resist, but we didn't stand a chance with guns.
So many of our people were massacred in different areas in the area.
Aboriginals have been around for 70,000 years or more.
When did you get the right to vote? 1967.
It's mad, isn't it?
And, yeah, Europeans, they tried wiping us out,
but they didn't do a good enough job.
I'm very glad!
While I am here in the rain forest, I want to know more about the
different aspects of traditional life in the Daintree.
Lincoln is Juan's brother,
and he's agreed to show me another part of life here.
Lincoln!
How are you doing, mate? How are you? I'm fine.
So, what is it we're going to have to do?
All right, well, we're going to take you out
and show you how to, hopefully, catch something here.
Lincoln and I are spear fishing for dinner.
I'll get you out, we'll start working.
Poke anything you're not sure of.
Sage advice I plan on following...
But, at the moment, I can't see anything at all.
..if I ever get the chance.
Argh!
I thought I saw the flash of something there.
Have you got anything yet, mate?
Nothing yet.
I'm glad we're not running a fish and chip shop.
LINCOLN LAUGHS The queue would be out there.
The trouble is, I've got this great camera crew...
..right in front of me, stirring up all the mud.
The waters around the Daintree are filled with 1,500 types of fish.
Allegedly.
There's probably no other bit of water on the entire planet
that has less fish in it.
Here we go, crab! Oh, there he goes, he's on the run.
Yay!
Oh, you got something for the day. Right!
Well, I wouldn't say it was a total victory.
I think we've probably been out about an hour and a half,
haven't we? Yeah, about that. But I've got one swimmer crab.
Something to eat, yeah, share with the family, so...
I hope there's a large salad!
Crocodiles will be here soon, so we'd better head back.
You're not winding me up, there are really crocs? No.
No, they come fishing at night now. Shall we go? I'll take you back.
That has changed colour already, hasn't it? Yeah.
We don't muck around.
Oh, great, thank you, mate.
One ready for you. That's lovely.
Oh, I like this bit, that's my favourite.
Oh, that's great!
The great thing about this country being so big
is that you've got the reef, and the rain forest,
and the rivers, and the mountains, and the outback,
but for me it's all held together by the Australians.
This straight-talking, practical,
very funny, very ironic,
very matey people.
Good on you, Australia.
Coming up, I continue my railway adventure in Japan,
home of the famous bullet train.
That's so cool!
From Tokyo's neon nightlife...
It's Godzilla!
..I get submerged in Japanese culture...
The only thing I'm nervous about
is sometimes I really want to scratch my face.
..and have a stab... Ha!
..at being a samurai.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, ooph!
This time, my journey takes me across Japan.
This place is famous for the bullet train.
But I'll be venturing off the mainland too,
to explore this fantastic country.
I'm starting my trip on Kyushu, Japan's most southerly major island,
before speeding on to Kyoto and Tokyo at 200mph.
I'll finish up 1,200 miles later
in Hakodate, in the far north.
It's autumn here,
and the countryside is a blaze of gorgeous colour.
This is my first visit to Japan,
and absolutely everything feels completely new to me.
First things first,
this is not a costume.
I got into my hotel last night,
and the hotel manager insisted that I wear this kimono-y thing
all the while I'm at the hotel.
And then the shoe thing started.
See these plastic ones?
I'm only allowed to wear them outside here, on the decking.
And then, when I get into here, I wear bare feet
until I come to the front door,
where I have to put these on.
Have a look. Look, there's a little gap... See that there?
..between my big toe and the other ones
in order to contain that thing.
But then, and this is quite extraordinary...
..when I go to the toilet,
I have special toilet slippers.
Japan has done my head in,
and I haven't even got my shoes on yet!
To make matters worse, when I was a kid,
the Japanese were the enemy.
It was just after the Second World War,
and everyone's mum and dad told terrible stories
of the cruelty in Japanese prisoner of war camps.
It wasn't until the 1960s that anyone round my way even
bought a Japanese car.
Those days are behind us now,
and I'm looking forward to seeing
how a new generation has shaped modern Japan.
Ever since the first railway line was built from Tokyo in the 1800s,
the country has been obsessed by trains.
17,000 miles of track now cover the length and breadth of Japan,
which has the third busiest network in the world.
My first stop is Beppu, famous because of its unique geology.
It's built on top of thousands of hot springs,
and as a result, you can see steam escaping out of the ground
all over the city.
The whole town looks like it's leaking steam,
and no-one is noticing.
Yeah, once we had somebody calling the fire brigade by mistake,
thinking there's a big fire going on, and he was, of course,
a tourist that didn't know about this venting steam.
My guide, Ye Omi, is giving me
a flavour of life in a town that's literally built on steam.
As well as providing a tourist attraction, the hot water is
used by the town's residents for their everyday activities.
It's piped into homes to provide heating
and used in restaurants to make the local cuisine.
These are Beppu's ominously named Eight Hells,
where the water gushes out off the ground at almost boiling point.
No! Oh, no! God, I pressed the wrong thing!
No, no, you did it right, you did it right.
So, here, you can cook a whole meal in steam from the Earth...
Off we go, plunk in, and put the lid back on.
BEEPING The alarm is going!
..in less than 20 minutes.
This is really, really gorgeous.
HE LAUGHS
That really is the dog's whatsits, isn't it?
There are lots of clever ways to use this stuff.
It's the first time I've ever steamed my feet.
Some more immersive than others.
My feet is coming out.
You tuck them back in.
It is a bit like being wrapped up
in a big duvet, and getting warmer and warmer.
This is Beppu's hot spring-infused sand.
The treatment is designed to create a subterranean sauna,
opening the pores and relieving the stress.
The only thing I'm nervous about
is sometimes I really want to scratch my face.
I was thinking exactly that right now!
Could you ask if maybe she could scratch my nose,
just the left-hand side of my nose?
SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE
Oh, oh!
Oh, that is so good.
Thank you, lady who is burying me alive!
Oh, that is top.
Anywhere in the world you've got hot springs,
you have nice hot bathing pools.
In Japan, they are called onsen.
In Britain, they say that this kind of bathing began
with the Georgians, don't they? Or the Romans.
And round here, they say it was started by the samurai.
And I'm sure that there is a lot of truth in it,
but I reckon that there is a bigger truth, too, and that is
that as long as there have been people pacing the Earth,
they have loved getting into warm water
and listening to the trickle of water.
I reckon even in Stone Age times, they used to take the weekend off
and bring the kids here and just sit down and have a nice time.
It's actually boiling hot in here.
Would you mind shifting the camera
so I can get out without showing everyone my chopstick?
I've got 1,200 miles to cover.
But I'm not taking just any old train.
This is the Seven Stars, one of the most exclusive in the world.
Trips cost up to £10,000.
Even so, demand is so high,
the perspective passengers
sometimes have to enter a lottery for tickets.
MUSIC: Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini
Oh, my goodness.
Look at this.
Lovely, elegant bar...
Can you hear the singing?
It's just gorgeous.
HE SIGHS
How wonderful is this?!
This is Japan's answer to the Orient Express.
And every last detail has been made as opulent
and luxurious as possible.
At the back, there's even a huge panoramic window, so
when the train is moving, passengers are given a spectacular view.
Your own bar.
Oh, look at this.
This is even more exclusive than the rest of the exclusive carriage.
Imagine 26 millionaires,
and you're the one billionaire. "Go away."
This is probably the most luxurious train in the world.
Only 30 passengers a time have the privilege of travelling in it.
So, as I'm heading north on my journey around the world,
why don't I do it in absolute style,
on this magnificent train?
Ten grand a ticket, that's why! Bye!
One of Japan's national symbols is the samurai,
the legendary sword-wielding warriors.
I'm crossing the island of Kyushu to visit Kumamoto,
where the samurai made their last stand
against the Imperial Army 150 years ago.
The area is still home to one of the last remaining master swordsmiths.
Matsunaga Genrokuro has been making this famous weapon for 40 years.
Some swords can fetch up to £10,000.
But I'm being given the chance to use one
and getting a lesson in the ancient art of swordsmanship.
THEY SPEAK JAPANESE
I'm not quite sure what's happening at the moment.
As soon as I walked in here,
two people kind of mugged me
and took my shoes off and put me on here.
Thank you very much.
In the past, the samurai knights would've
tested their swords on human flesh,
but that might be a bit messy,
so today we are using rolled up bamboo mats.
Oh!
Fantastic.
Although the samurai lost their power in the 1800s,
the strict code of honour that they lived by
still shapes Japanese culture,
emphasising courage, loyalty and self-denial.
It seems there's a similarly tough set of rules
for me to follow today.
HE SPEAKS JAPANESE
If only I could understand them.
WHISPERS: I've no idea what he's saying!
It's just somebody talking in a foreign language
while I hold a deadly weapon!
The question is, can I cut it as a samurai?
Ha!
Well, it died.
Yeah.
HE SPEAKS JAPANESE
Look, let's go again, and let's do it properly this time!
Ah, it fell! It fell!
Get in, my son.
Finally, I'm on a roll.
Ha! Ha!
Yeah, all right if I do this one in slow-motion?
OK.
Ha!
Obi-wan Kenobi, ooph!
It's time for the Shinkansen.
Or, to you and me, the bullet train.
Just look at it.
This is a thoroughbred.
Well, won't you look at this?
Don't you just want to give it a handful of grass or something?
It's so ridiculous.
The bullet train is so ultra sophisticated,
kind of sexy and animalistic on the outside.
Inside, it's just a train! Just another train.
A bit disappointing, really.
But it is a train that goes up to 200mph.
The Shinkansen was the world's first high-speed commercial rail line,
opening over 50 years ago, in 1964,
as the fastest train on the planet.
Now, the network covers the length and breadth of Japan,
with over 1,000 scheduled journeys per day.
So, far from being something special,
for the Japanese commuters, it has become just ordinary.
The bullet train is taking me on to Kyoto,
covering 400 miles in less than three hours.
That's the same distance as London to Edinburgh
but nearly twice as fast.
From Kyoto, I'm making a detour
and stopping off in Wakayama.
All over the world, remote railway lines struggle to stay in business.
But the Wakayama electric railway came up with a uniquely
Japanese way to save their local train.
The railway is now a huge success, and it is all thanks to cats.
Thank you very much.
Good Lord.
Is this cat stuffed?
Oh, it's moved! It's alive.
I thought you were showing me a dead cat!
Why is she here?
TRANSLATION FROM JAPANESE
Working as a stationmaster?
Can we have a closer look at it?
Let's go. Let's ride!
These cute cats have become big business.
They're believed to have contributed nearly £6 million
to Wakayama's economy.
A stray cat called Tama was first made an honorary
stationmaster in 2007.
The idea quickly captured the public's imagination, and the
arrival of new passengers helped bring the line back into profit.
Tama's successor, Nitama, is still drawing in the crowds.
Are you a tourist? Yes. Yep, from Texas.
And you came all the way to meet the cat? Yes.
Well, we came to Japan, but I did make a special trip out here
while I was in Japan to come out here, yeah.
Did you know about this cat already? Yes. I really liked Tama.
I painted Tama. Yeah. And so then I wanted to come and meet Nitama.
You're a little bit obsessed, aren't you?
I love cats, so, yeah.
Tell me what you know about Tama.
I know that, when she passed away, she was enshrined as a goddess,
and...
She was... What did you just say?
She was elevated to a goddess status.
This has gone far beyond a successful PR stunt.
The cats have taken on a big significance
for the people of Wakayama.
When the first Tama died in 2015,
3,000 people came to her funeral.
There's two stories going on here, aren't there?
One is you had this failing railway line losing loads of money,
they got rid of all the staff in their stations,
someone had this crazy idea of getting a stray cat to become
the stationmaster, it went viral, turned the company's
fortunes round, and there was a happy ending.
But there is a second story, too.
This is a Shinto shrine.
Before I do anything here, I have to bow twice, clap,
bow again, then pray or ring the bell.
The shrine is dedicated to that cat.
These two representations here are of the cat,
who's become a deity, a god now, within the shrine.
It says something about the relationship
between the Japanese and animals that I don't quite understand.
So it appears that, in Shintoism, Japan's traditional religion,
this cat can become a goddess simply because she brought
such good fortune to the railway.
Coming up, Tokyo.
Oh, look at this!
From neon nightlife...
Hardly anybody's looking at him. It's Godzilla!
..to street-style makeovers.
This is quite liberating, actually. It's like being in drag.
I'm halfway through my rail journey across Japan.
It's 300 miles to my next stop, Tokyo.
By bullet train, it takes just 2.5 hours,
through some of Japan's most famous scenery.
I asked the woman who was collecting the tickets
if we would see Mount Fuji,
and she said, "Yes, at 10.56."
Well, it is 10.56 now...
..and there it is.
It's incredibly symmetrical, isn't it?
In Japan, even nature is neat and precise.
The railways in Japan are famous for their punctuality.
The average delay for these bullet trains is just 54 seconds.
And this is one of the busiest lines in the world.
During peak times, a train arrives every five minutes,
meaning the Shinkansen's service to Tokyo can be more frequent
than some lines on the London Underground.
But now this is going to be a real gear change.
I'm heading for Tokyo -
the bright lights, the big city,
cartoons,
all those people going like that for their selfies.
I'm not quite sure what to expect.
In my mind's eye, it's a bit like
a kind of hyped-up version of Blade Runner,
but whatever it's going to be like, I'm really excited.
The capital handles 13 billion passenger rail trips every year.
Not so surprising, given Tokyo is the world's most
populated city, home to 37 million people.
The hyper developed city I expected is easy to find.
You can get a hot cuppa in a can.
Cafe au lait sounds all right, doesn't it?
And it comes straight away, and it is piping hot.
For businessmen working long hours, there is the capsule hotel.
Even the taxis are hi-tech.
These doors close on their own, watch.
But to really get a feel for Tokyo, it's best to experience it at night.
I'm heading to Shinjuku, an area famous for its nightlife.
As the sun goes down, the city lights up anew.
What's going on here?
To try and make sense of the madness,
I'm meeting up with Yumi for a whistle-stop tour.
She is Tokyo born and bred and is an expert on life in the capital.
Did you see Godzilla up there? Oh, yeah. Look, look, look, look!
I love the fact that hardly anybody is looking at him. Yeah.
It's Godzilla!
Ooh. Oh, look at this.
I've been to some of the biggest cities in the world,
but Tokyo at night is something else.
You don't have to do anything?
No, this is just a photo booth.
With blinding lights and wall-to-wall noise everywhere,
it's an overwhelming assault on the senses.
Some people are, like, super pro. Like this.
The Japanese do cute like no other culture I know.
Yeah, we take it to a whole other level.
Look at that, that is so cute it makes me want to vomit.
And, of course, anime.
You cannot forget the anime culture of Tokyo. Yeah.
This is the stress relief.
You just, like, flip the table over.
Oh, really? They can measure how annoyed you are, you know,
how stressed you are.
You tap it.
That's going to increase the anger.
And flip it.
Oh, it went! There you go! I got you!
In a city this crowded, space is at a premium,
and old neighbourhoods are right up against new ones.
This is so pretty.
Yes, this street is called Omoide Yokocho.
In English, it is Memory Lane.
It is brilliant, isn't it? It's really evocative.
It is just amazing, like, how tiny every shops are. Yeah.
It's just so tiny.
And they're all so full, that's the other thing. Yes.
It's just like... Like old Japan. Yes!
In one of the world's busiest cities, many people wear face masks,
and I'd always assumed it was for hygiene reasons.
And while that may be true for a lot of people,
it seems for some, there's another more subtle reason.
Japanese people, we are
concerned about what others think about ourselves. Yeah.
So we always, you know, try to keep our reputation
as the best as we could, and that's why we cover the face.
The face! Yeah.
Because if you're wearing a mask,
actually nobody can see what you look like or how you feel. Yeah.
So they can't think bad things about you. Exactly!
Oh, that's so sweet.
I want to go up to somebody with a mask and say,
"It's all right, lighten up.
"We haven't even noticed you.
"We're not worried about who you are."
So we don't want to stand out from, you know, like, the same community,
so there is a harmony, you know, in the whole culture. Yeah.
Like, in Japanese culture. And we respect that harmony.
Like, maybe too much.
I find that really fascinating, cos for me,
as an old hippie, harmony is something beautiful,
something to be worked for, something to be attained. Right.
What you're saying is harmony actually can mean,
"Don't rock the boat." Yeah, exactly.
Because it's so important to fit in to Japanese society,
many people work hard to conform to what's expected of them.
Perhaps the most famous example of this are the suited salary men -
the white-collar employees who sacrifice
everything in service of their companies.
And Tokyo is the centre of this demanding work culture.
But not everyone here wants to wear a suit.
Oh, I like that! Yeah.
You like that? Yeah, I love it. Oh, yeah?
Oh, great! THEY LAUGH
This is Harajuku,
a Tokyo neighbourhood known for its unusual street fashion.
Let's try a few different jackets. I'm really fond of this one. Yeah.
Wow! THEY LAUGH
I think that might be a little much, though.
Junyan, a designer, and Emily, originally from America,
are giving me a makeover in the cute and colourful Harajuku style.
And the monster. And the monster, yeah. Definitely need a monster.
That suits you, Tony! Thank you very much!
I'm being heckled by an Englishman.
If you feel like it doesn't match, you're doing it right.
Do you feel appropriately Harajukued?
THEY LAUGH
It is quite liberating, actually. It's like being in drag.
Suddenly, it's a completely different you. Hee-hee!
Shall we hit town? Yeah! Let's take it on a test-run.
The Harajuku theme is taken to a new level at the local Monster Cafe.
Absolutely everything is decorated in the Kawaii style -
the Japanese word for cute.
Harajuku is home to one of Japan's many inventive subcultures.
Popular with young people who want to go against the grain.
Adulthood in Japan has very specific tenets.
You get married, you have children, you work for 40 years, you retire.
And for a lot of people, especially during the '80s and '90s,
immediately after the economy, like, the bubble burst? Mm-hm.
They were disillusioned.
And that life is still something a lot of young people just
don't either want, or can't achieve.
And so, kind of a kickback from that, like, very deliberate,
elegant, keep-things-to-yourself kind of adulthood,
you get stuff like this. You get this explosion of childhood fantasy.
So, this is the absolute alternative of the multinational company
that you go into when you're 18,
you serve it 16 hours a day until you're 65? Yeah.
Most of Japan's subcultures
are really kicking back against that, like, daily grind.
Which is what punk was doing in the '70s in England. Exactly.
It's a very similar motivation.
Actually, a lot of subcultures here in Harajuku
were born from late teens, early 20-year-olds going,
"I don't want to be a corporate person.
"I don't want to work only for the rest of my life.
"I want to enjoy something else."
There were people who felt much more comfortable dressing up
and, like, feeling that security from being childish.
From enjoying the times when you didn't have the responsibilities...
I get it! Yeah. ..of, like, working for everything.
I've just realised that it is simply
another aspect of being Japanese, isn't it?
In a funny sort of way, it's really retreating, it's gentle. Yeah.
I understand now why some of Tokyo's young people want to look
as different as possible from the suited salary men.
Just like the hippies and the punks, they're refusing to conform.
It's just that they're doing it with colourful clothes
and childish characters.
But Harajuku style is just one part of Japan's huge pop culture scene,
which is now world-famous.
From anime cartoons, to J-pop music, to video games,
something about Japan's cute and quirky inventions
has captured imaginations far beyond Tokyo.
That was just the most extraordinary morning.
An incredible confrontation with a new pop culture
that I knew absolutely nothing about.
I suppose one of the really good things about pop culture
is it's young people looking at the previous generation
and doing something completely opposite.
So there's been this incredibly oppressive, international,
capitalist series of organisations
that have dominated Japan since the 1970s.
And the sons and daughters of people who worked in them are saying,
"Whoa! We don't want to do that!"
I'm rejoining the rails and leaving Tokyo.
I've just noticed that the train which has come in
and is now going to go back out again,
they've swivelled the seats, all of them,
around 180 degrees so everyone's going to be facing the right way.
That's so cool!
From the capital, I'm travelling 200 miles to the coastal town of Sendai.
I'm on the Tohoku Shinkansen,
the bullet-train line running to the top of Japan's main island, Honshu.
We're heading north, but we've stopped off for a moment at Sendai station.
Can you hear those birds?
They're not actually birds, it's just an electronic recording.
BIRDSONG It's Japan!
This recorded birdsong is apparently designed
to guide blind people to the exits.
Another example of that Japanese attention to detail.
45 minutes from Sendai station is Matsushima Bay,
one of Japan's most scenic places.
And you get such a sense here of Japan as an island,
or rather, as islands.
There's about 8,000 altogether.
270-odd in this bay alone.
These little islands are so pretty, aren't they?
They're like something out of a Japanese painting.
Because Japan's got so many islands,
it wasn't always easy to connect up the country by rail.
In 1988, there was an important breakthrough when the Seikan Tunnel
opened, connecting the main island of Honshu with Hokkaido.
An engineering masterpiece.
Today, it remains the world's longest
and deepest undersea rail tunnel.
My journey ends at Hakodate,
the northern terminal of the bullet train.
I don't think I'd ever realised just how long Japan actually is.
It's 1,800 miles from top to bottom.
Remember, a week ago,
I was sunning myself in the black sand right down south.
And today, welcome to northern Japan.
This region is the seafood capital of Japan,
known for its huge variety of local fish.
Ken Hasegawa, a sushi chef with 20 years in the business,
is making me lunch.
And I'm being joined Kay, a Hakodate local.
Now, I'm the world's worst person with chopsticks.
Is this the right thing to do? You're laughing at me!
If you want. If you want? That was just politeness.
Another thing about the Japanese is that, um...they're not only
polite, but a lot of the time, they're very humble.
We think it's a kind of virtue to be sort of humble, to be reserved.
We say in the Japanese society, a tall tree catches much wind.
A tall tree catches much wind! Yeah, I like that.
Also, we are trying to live in harmony with each other. Yeah.
To be in harmony with nature,
to be in harmony with the people around you,
is very, very important.
So in that case, if you just insist your own opinion,
it might offend other people.
That might be a little bit coward, in a way,
but we prefer to be a reserved attitude, like this. Yeah.
This is my favourite so far.
KAY AND KEN SPEAK JAPANESE Mm. Mm.
Japan has felt very foreign to me,
and there's still parts of the culture I can't get my head around.
I don't know if I'll ever quite understand the dressing up
and love of all things cute.
But talking to Japanese people, I've learned how hard this
society works to be harmonious in everything, and I admire that.
I love their attention to detail.
The way that every little garden needs to be so well-kept
and the food on a plate has to be so neat and well-ordered.
And even when you're being given the bill by the man in the hotel,
the way he does it is so polite and just exquisite.
And I've learnt how to smile and nod and bow, just about,
and know when you're supposed to take your shoes off
and when you're supposed to put them back on again.
In fact, if I've learnt anything at all from this Japanese trip,
it's that back home, I really am a bit of a slob.
Coming up - I'm in the United States, where I continue
my adventure on some of the world's greatest train routes.
From California and Colorado
to America's deep south, New Orleans.
And the Big Apple, where I explore behind the scenes
of the largest railway station in the world.
It's extraordinary!
So finally, I've made it to the United States.
It's the beginning of a great journey
that's going to take me from the Wild West to the iconic east,
across California to Colorado,
Louisiana, and finally, New York.
But the line starts here, in San Francisco, California.
Home to around 40 million people,
it's the most popular state in the US.
And it's also the starting point for one of the world's most
classic railway journeys, called the California Zephyr.
It's a legendary train.
Opened in 1949 to go from San Francisco to Chicago,
and it was the first transcontinental train ever
to sacrifice speed for scenery.
Since the beginning, the Zephyr was known for its trademark carriages,
with glass domes that allowed a 360-degree view.
In the early days, this scenic route was a success.
But by the '60s, increases in air and road travel
were bringing passenger numbers down
and the famous train was discontinued for over 10 years.
But before I make it to Denver,
there's one place I've always wanted to see.
I love it when you get off a train and you're immediately confronted
with the completely unexpected.
I only have to walk half a dozen steps and immediately,
I'm in Sacramento as it would've been
in the middle of the 19th century,
when it was a rich, powerful, confident city.
Like so many places in California,
Sacramento was founded during the California Gold Rush -
one of the greatest events of 19th-century America.
Thousands of prospective miners travelled here
in the hope of making a fortune.
So it was an incredibly prosperous gold town.
Banks, barbers, brothels, everybody making money.
Then, in 1861-1862, there was a gargantuan flood.
Suddenly, there was a lake 300 miles long by 20 miles wide,
where there'd been no lake before.
And it decimated this town. So, what did the city fathers do?
Did they decide to junk it and start again? No.
Their plan was to raise the whole town up
between 14 and 10 feet in order to protect it in future.
And that's what they did.
Thanks to this ingenuity, Sacramento's importance grew.
And now it's the state capital of California,
which I didn't know until today.
But I've got to keep moving.
Denver's still a thousand miles down the line
and I want to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
But my film crew keep interrupting me.
Great, Tony. I want to do the same thing, but with your hand down.
Oh, for goodness' sake!
My epic journey across the United States has brought me
to the exquisite Rocky Mountains.
They're America's longest mountain range.
Crossing the continent from Canada all the way south, to New Mexico.
And with the arrival of the railways in the 19th century,
they suddenly became accessible to everyone.
My next stop is Colorado, in the Wild West.
Because to me, a journey across America wouldn't be complete
without one thing - cowboys.
This is ranching country and this is a ranch. What's a ranch?
Well, by definition, it's a workplace, isn't it?
Just like a factory floor or a building site.
I'm heading to a place called a dude ranch.
That means a working ranch that's also a luxury resort.
People will pay thousands of pounds a week to come here
and dress up like one of the workers.
But why? What's the attraction?
Tony. Hi, mate. The man who runs it is David Craig.
This kind of ranch has been going on for more than a century, hasn't it?
Well, this ranch itself has been here for 99 years. As a dude ranch?
That's right. In fact, the first slogan was,
"All you can eat steak and apple pie and bear hunting".
100 years ago, the word "dude" had a different meaning to today.
It's what western cattle ranchers called the city slickers
who came here on holiday.
These are traditional western chaps.
I'm going to walk on this side. Yeah.
Good.
I'm not being fresh here.
Do you feel kind of cool, like you're a bit of a bad ass? I do.
I feel very much of a bad ass. All right!
This is what dude ranching is all about -
a 5' 5" little bloke puts on this stuff
and feels like he's Clint Eastwood.
Shall we pick out your horse? No, I want to look at the camera like this,
just for a little bit longer.
That's better. Let's go. All right. Right this way.
The chaps are falling off!
They're practically around my ankles already!
As soon as I started to walk, I felt that long slither down my leg.
How's that feel? A bit better? That's a bit better. Thank you.
That's beautiful.
A true cowboy needs a horse. Give me your darkest stallion.
We we're off into the real American wilderness.
You can see, like, mountains for days.
That's the best part of Colorado cos it's so expansive, you feel like
all around us is just mountains and mountains and mountains.
Yeah. It's so awesome.
This takes me right back to the Hollywood westerns I grew up with.
Where stars like John Wayne glamorised this iconic way of life.
I love the fact that you're paid to do this. Me, too. It's a dream.
And people have been paid for well over 100 years just to take idiots
like me out into the countryside, pretending to be a cowboy.
I'm continuing my whistle-stop journey through the United States
and I'm now heading for New Orleans.
Some of the stations here are so small that all the passengers
get off and on at the one door.
In a culture obsessed with cars,
the railway network is surprisingly comprehensive.
With regular intercity and cross-country services.
Although I've never really understood why the US doesn't have
a high-speed railway network, like the ones in Japan or Germany.
New Orleans.
What I hadn't expected was that as soon as I got out of the train,
it would feel so different from any other city in the US
that I've been to so far.
The light's different, it smells different and it's so muggy,
it feels as though the whole city's sticking to me already.
BAND STRIKES UP
This is called a second-line parade.
This isn't for anything, this is just what people do on a Sunday.
The tradition of second-line parades
goes back to 19th-century funeral marches,
which were a celebration in honour of life lost.
And really, apart from the fact there's no coffins or dead persons being carried,
this is pretty much how the funeral marches would've been.
And they reckon that this strutting style that they do
and this whole idea of marching comes from their African roots.
And this is an echo of what people used to do way back in time.
This is what we... Yeah, that's right, yeah. There you go.
No, it's the feet. Yeah, it's all about the feet. There you go.
THEY LAUGH
# Na-na-na-na-na-na
# Ba-da-da-da-da-da. #
When they do those different songs and stuff,
they make you catch that beat.
This comes out of the parades they used to have in funerals.
Do you still have parades when people die?
Yes. They just had a parade for Aretha Franklin.
Oh, my God! The second-line they had for Prince was amazing!
They had the purple casket, the purple cars.
People were dressed in purple.
So it's different second-lines that they have,
and that's when you have different brass bands come out,
different social clubs come out, different people celebrating
New Orleans and how much they love the place.
And they celebrate the African culture...
Yeah, yeah. ..of New Orleans.
THUNDERCLAP
Shall we stop now? Run for cover.
Flash storms like this are typical in this part of America.
And in 2005, Hurricane Katrina was an extreme example
of the power these rains can have.
Local musician Winston Turner was here.
I took it for granted, just living here, growing up in it,
that the culture would never leave,
but after Hurricane Katrina, we were actually
able to look at the city underwater.
That's when we realised,
"Man! This is a possibility that it may not come back."
Oh, you really felt that? Yeah.
Hurricane Katrina left over a million people homeless.
As the population of New Orleans fled,
the city's very existence was called into question.
Everyone that you knew was just displaced.
It took me maybe, um...three to four weeks to find my own mum.
Your own mum? Yeah.
Because we thought we're just going to leave and we'll be back.
We were really displaced.
So when I find out I'm in South Dakota
and there's a New Orleans band performing,
I would do whatever I had to do to get there,
because it was somewhere you could go
and be with people that expressed the same hurt,
the same feeling, the same love of something that you felt.
The city's 90% recovered and its spirit is as strong as ever.
It's time for me to continue my journey to my final destination.
There's a direct train that runs daily from New Orleans to New York.
It takes 30 hours and it's called the Crescent.
It arrives in Penn station, but a quick subway ride
brings you to what's maybe the most impressive station in the US.
If you're going to go around the world on trains,
you've got to come to this place, haven't you?
Grand Central Station, the biggest railway station in the whole world.
Every day, three quarters of a million people come through these doors.
That is the entire population of Nottingham.
Well, not literally the... You know what I mean.
Grand Central Station opened in 1913
and the building was an immediate hit.
I love it because it's the beating heart of the city, I feel.
Concetta Bencivenga from the New York Transit Museum
is showing me around.
It is the epitome of New York in 1913.
It's high camp, isn't it?
It's saying, "Oh, look at me! I'm so elegant, I'm so sophisticated!"
This is like a bridge over the canal in Venice.
They really wanted you to have a sense of grandeur, of scale,
of arriving, of being in New York.
The building may be an architectural masterpiece,
but in the '60s and '70s, it fell into disrepair.
Tony, can you see that square, that dark square...? Oh, right up there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When they started to save the building,
this entire ceiling was hidden by layers and layers of black gunk.
That colour? Yes. Wow! It must have been so oppressive. It was, it was.
So that's just a little reminder to everybody that's how bad it got before it was saved.
Restoring Grand Central Station to its original splendour
took 20 years.
To really appreciate it, Concetta is giving me some very special access.
These were originally constructed,
they were meant to be open for cross-ventilation.
Oh, with these wonderful cranky chains here to wind them up
and down. That's why these were known as the lungs of the building.
And they give you...
A really good bird's-eye view. ..just a wonderful picture.
It's like a Where's Wally drawing. It's extraordinary!
Look! Look, Sam, look at that guy over there.
I thought he was having a pee! CONCETTA LAUGHS
It does look like it. No, I was having a whisper. Oh, yeah?
That's not a euphemism? It's roughly the same thing.
And this is where... You whisper into here?
Hello, Tony, can you hear me?
Oh, wow! Yes, I can hear you. Yes! My goodness!
So the sound travels all the way up, all along the tiles
and down to you over there. Yep.
And so it's one of the sort of engineering happy accidents
that happened because of the lay of the arches,
it created these lovely whispering walls.
You sound like you're one of those recorded guides in a museum.
THEY LAUGH
Coming up - I visit New York's largest borough...
Come this side. We drive on the other side here. Of course you do!
..I make a new friend...
Tony's already making me take off my clothes!
..and I do as the locals do on a strange tour of Manhattan.
Rubbing the cojones is good luck, Tony.
My travels across the United States have brought me
to the East Coast, to the Big Apple.
Some of this country's earliest railway lines were here.
Today, it's got the biggest subway system in the world,
with 472 stations.
Nearly all of them open 24 hours a day.
I want to find out more about the real New York.
So I'm heading to a part of the city I've always wanted to visit,
but tourists don't usually go to.
The 7 train links Manhattan with New York's largest borough.
If someone says the words "New York" to you, what do you think of?
Greenwich Village, Broadway, Uptown, Downtown.
I bet what you don't think of is Queens. And yet it's huge!
So, what's the problem?
When the number 7 train opened in Queens over 100 years ago,
it sparked a real-estate boom that transformed a rural area
into a lively neighbourhood.
New York Fire Department. Yeah. They're heroes.
HORN BLASTS
Tony! Hey! Welcome to Queens! Thank you.
The most-diverse borough in the world. Is it? Yeah.
You see, I had always assumed that it was
the epitome of the white working-class borough.
Well, we speak about 170 languages,
about 50% of our residents were born in another country.
Queens' native Rob MacKay has offered to show me around.
It's really interesting. Come this side.
We drive on the other side here. Of course you do!
TONY LAUGHS Whoops! Huh!
We're following the tracks of the 7 train that runs elevated above us.
The line's nickname is the International Express.
Right here, we get to what they call Little Manila.
That's a Filipino place.
H-Hey! And you see over there, Chinese Peruvian food.
Do you have much of a problem with all these different
ethnicities all mixed up and coming so recently?
So the thing I'm most proud of is how well we all get along.
That's Nepalese. The United Sherpa Association of America
has its headquarters over there.
So that's Ecuadorian. Remember, in Ecuador, in the mountains,
they eat cuy, you know, guinea pigs.
They will tell you that it's the best meat
because the guinea pigs eat nothing but alfalfa.
Will you stop talking about the guinea pigs?!
Well, if you had one, you'd be... I've had them, in little cages.
Oh, you've had them. OK. I've loved them. OK.
I hope Cinnamon and Nutmeg aren't watching.
It is extraordinary.
I've spent months going around the world in trains,
seeing all these different kinds of faces.
I might as well have saved myself the trouble.
If I'd stayed in Queens...
There you go! ..I'd have seen exactly the same variety of people.
There's another thing Queens is famous for.
It's the birthplace of the current President.
These days, he's got a place in the middle of Manhattan.
This is the Trump Tower, owned, of course, by Donald Trump.
Now, this isn't a political programme,
so I just want to talk about the architecture.
I think that is the foulest building in the whole of Manhattan.
I think it's absolutely obscene.
I think it should be demolished brick by brick.
Those bricks should be ground to dust.
That dust should be flushed down the drain and eaten by rats.
But that's the architecture.
About the President, I've got nothing to say, really. Seems fine.
The Trump Tower is just one of thousands of tall buildings here.
Manhattan's skyscrapers are rising even higher as we speak.
This skyline is absolutely unique, isn't it? It is.
Awe-inspiring, always.
Luke Miller is a third-generation New Yorker.
Pull up your whatsit.
Oh, man! Tony's already making me take off my clothes!
Look at that. Isn't that extraordinary!
You are going to so regret that in 30 years' time,
and I'm telling you that as a father.
THEY LAUGH
Anyway, what's happening here? This is crazy.
This is literally the largest development project
in our country's history.
These skyscrapers are being built
on top of some of New York's old rail yards.
The apartments, restaurants
and public spaces will form a city within a city.
How much do you reckon that's going to cost?
$25 billion is where they're at. 25...?! $25 billion.
It reminds us that we can reach for the sky.
If you've got enough money. If you have enough money!
What's this crowd doing up here?
So this 7,000lb bronze bull was sculpted by an Italian artist named
Arturo Di Modica as a gift to New York,
and represents a bull market, a strong market.
And everybody does this? Yes.
Rubbing the cojones is good luck, Tony. And I do this now? Yeah.
You'll see all the brokers doing it on the way to work every morning.
I can feel the magic happening.
THEY LAUGH
It's clearly worked for some people.
After all, New York has got more billionaires than any other city in the world.
Presumably, this is the beginning of Times Square? Yeah.
Whether it is Monday night or Saturday night,
these crowds are here.
This is the original New York Times building.
So Times Square gets its name from the New York Times.
And you lived around here when you were a kid? Yeah.
So I am one of five boys - Ricky, Nicky, Timmy, Lukey and Alize,
the whole lot of us. We grew up with a single mum raising us.
And what was the area like around here?
I mean, this area was rundown, crime-infested, drug-infested.
I mean, 42nd Street was lined with drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes.
I mean, when I walk through here today,
it's just mind-blowing how this has changed.
And that's the thing about New York. This is a city of aspiration.
People have always come here hoping for a better life.
Can you imagine, Tony, seeing this symbol?
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
And you still believe in that stuff?
LUKE LAUGHS Well, you do.
I mean, part of you does, doesn't it? Yeah.
There is part of you that is still passionate
about what that statue represents.
Well, of course. I mean, my whole life,
I've grown up in a place that represents diversity.
That embraces diversity.
It's the thing I'm most proud of as a New Yorker.
And I believe we hold that near and dear to our hearts.
I've reached the end of my journey, and what an adventure it's been.
Ha-ha!
I've travelled tens of thousands of miles...
Inhospitable landscape,
total flipping luxury.
..and been on some of the world's greatest railways.
From bullet trains in Japan
to the scenic routes in India.
I've seen incredible landscapes and met some wonderful people.
And everywhere, I've been greeted with warmth,
kindness and hospitality.
One thing I know for sure,
if I was asked to do it all again,
I'd jump at the chance.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media