Bob: The train ride down to Sydney was really a beautiful trip and I would highly recommend it. Despite the fact that the east coast is one of the most populated parts of Australia, the rural countryside was surprisingly sparsely populated. We wound around through the coastal mountains for most of the morning although we cut eastward to the coast by mid-afternoon and continued through a chain of small towns to the outskirts of Sydney that evening. |
Monika: The train ride was just as beautiful as coming up and Bob was again on camera duty since he sat next to the window. I snagged a window seat on the other side ever now and then to get a different view. The CountryLink trains have assigned seating and the conductors have printouts of who sits where and for how long. We were one of the few people going almost all the way. Most people went for shorter distances and at every station there was coming and going. The train does not have a diner but a buffet (emphasis on the first syllable) car. For lunch you could order one of four different hot entrees for about $10 and pick them up a little while later. Of course, they also had meat pies and sandwiches. To carry your food back to your seat they gave you very nifty little cotton bags, which we brought home with us. So we did not starve on the trip. |
Bob: Two curious things happened on our journey south. First our train hit and killed a cow. I felt the train go into emergency braking mode, which I recognized in part from my experience driving the train simulator at the Ipswich railroad museum. Then I felt a very slight bump and the train came to a complete stop. After a while the train started up rather slowly and I saw the corpse of a cow dangling from the left rear corner of the locomotive, just bumping along across each of the railroad ties. But that wasn't the only cow killed by train traffic as I saw another dead cow off to the left and Monika saw another one off to the right, so clearly the trains had been decimating the local herd, which, by the way, stood nearby staring rather resentfully at us if I understood their looks correctly. The engineer later said, however, that the rancher was responsible for fencing his land and keeping cows off the railroad right of way, so if there had been damage to the locomotive the rancher would have been at fault and the government would have sued him for damages. The second curious thing that happened was that an Aboriginal couple was escorted off the train. I only witnessed parts of the sequence of events first hand, but first there was a problem with the woman not having a ticket (I saw her sitting at different seats in the carriage despite the fact we all had assigned seats, which mildly perplexed me, but I didn't think much about it.). In any case, after having a heated discussion with the conductor the guy got off at the next station and apparently paid for her ticket. But later in the day he allegedly insulted or harassed the server in the buffet car at lunch in front of several witnesses, and the lady conductor apparently decided enough was enough. Two uniformed railroad security people came aboard and together with the conductor they politely told him that his behavior was unacceptable and he would have to leave the train. The pair left together at the next major station with the uniformed guards standing at the door to ensure their peaceable departure, after which our trip continued uneventfully. That was an isolated instance as it was the only incivility we witnessed during our five-week stay in Australia. A bus driver on the Dubbo-Broken Hill route told us, however, that he once had to put a chap off the bus for being disorderly and presumably drunk, but we never witnessed anything like that personally. Even the hard-core Hell's Angels drug-runners that we saw arrested just outside Cobar in the outback were standing quietly in front of their van and taking a relaxed smoke while the police rummaged through the back, cataloging a veritable pharmacopia of illegal pills and drugs. Similarly, in Melbourne we passed by a large, public demonstration by Indian students about alleged discrimination, but it was so quiet and low-key that we didn't notice it and only learned about it in the TV news that evening. Thus our overall experience in Australia was of a very civilized society. |
Monika: A sudden bump and a stop surprised us all. When we looked out of the window, we saw a bunch of cows looking very surprised. It seems that we caught one of them that was dumb enough to cross in front of the train. When I looked out on the other side of the train, I saw a second dead cow, that probably was caught by the train from Sydney to Brisbane. Farmers are supposed to keep their cows away from the tracks, but the grazing is good enough, that they are willing to risk the occasional death. Of course, there were lots of jokes about the meat pies after this little adventure. |
Bob: It was quite dark when we rolled into Hornsby later that evening. But we were so pleased to see Neville, bless his heart, sitting on a bench in the station waiting for us. We were somewhat travel weary by that time, so he was literally a sight for sore eyes. We chatted up a storm as we returned to his condominium for the evening (Lyn was already in the U.S.), where we could once again listen to classical music and watch rugby games to our heart's content. Interest in sports like rugby is widespread in Austalia, but Neville's dedication to classical music is definitely extraordinary and probably traces back to his grandfather who was a professional concert violinist. In any case, what a pleasant way to end the day! |
Monika: We got into Hornsby when it was already dark, but there was Neville right on the platform waiting for us. It made us feel welcome. We had a nice evening watching rugby - I was starting to really enjoy watching that game. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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