Twelve Hours To Melbourne

Thursday 30 November

Alarm ringing – and it’s still dark! The clock reads 04.50! But we have to be up and ready for the taxi booked for 06.00 to catch the train to Melbourne, leaving Central Station at 06.58. The taxi arrived ten minutes early, so we were not able to say “Goodbye” to John and Wendy, as they weren’t up yet. Arriving at the station, the train was already in on Platform 5, so we were able to load our luggage in the store at the end of our compartment, quite easily – not many others had arrived yet. In fact, by the time the train left Sydney our carriage was only half full, but the attendant told us it would fill up at Cootamundra – around midday – for an hour or so to Wagga Wagga. The start of the journey took us through areas where we had visited at the early part of our first tour – out through Goldburn (the train pulled up right opposite where the coach had parked for our first stop for coffee on that tour). We hadn’t been going long when they announced breakfast was ready for purchase in the buffet car. Listening to the various options, cornflakes was on the menu, and I was quite surprised when Colin returned only with toast and marmalade and tea – a very frugal breakfast for him.

The train rumbled on through the vast areas of wheat fields, now looking far more healthy than when we had passed this way a month or more ago – they had some heavy rain in this area while we were up north and it seems to have vastly improved the crop, large yellow heads of corn waving in the breeze. After the first few initial stops at suburbs of Sydney, the train stopped roughly hourly at small towns – there were a couple of announcements about optional stops, but obviously no one on the train wanted these, so we chugged through. As we traveled on, more and more fields had been harvested, and sheep (at last!) were grazing in the stubble. Further south this became sheep and cows – large dairy herds roaming fields as far as you could see. There were still large stretches of temperate woodland, with lots of eucalyptus showing signs of having been fired. Huge bush fires have been raging between the Sydney hinterland and northern Victoria in the last ten days, which they are still trying to extinguish in parts, but this burning looked like a prescribed burn. We continued on our journey through Wagga Wagga, Junee, The Rock, Culcairn to Albury, where the crews of the train changed – we had been traveling eight hours by this time – it was surprising just how quickly the time went – I had blogged a bit - till the batteries ran out, we had both listened to our MP4s – again till we had no more power – and puzzled a bit – but Colin can’t read going along, so I had to read the clues out on the crossword for him to then suggest an answer. We decided against lunch or dinner on the train, as we would probably eat when we were settled in the hotel, the menu was the same for each meal – fish, chicken or vegetarian pasta – so we just had a snack. The scenery changed to densely wooded hills and in the fields we saw a greater variety of wildlife than we had seen all tour – rabbits and hares bounding across the stubble fields, pigs, goats, chickens, sheep and a horse all living together in one field, lots of wild horses, many wallabies and kangaroos and several birds of prey, sitting on fences or floating though the air – as well as fields of sheep and cattle. The new crew took us to Wangaratta and Benalla, before finally arriving at Melbourne at 19.00. Just outside the city we passed the largest shopping mall in Australia – it seemed many times larger than the Metro or Bluewater, and took a few minutes to pass, even on a speeding train. We arrived to a bright sunny evening, that was much warmer than last night in Sydney – one of those real balmy nights that are so rare at home.

We hailed a cab to take us to the hotel – not being at all sure how far we would be traveling – only to find he had a spare wheel in his boot and could not fit either case in, so there was not enough room – but another large twelve-seater people carrier taxi arrived behind and stowed our luggage easily. The ride took about fifteen minutes to a leafy boulevard in East Melbourne, the hotel being very country style, with verandahs, and a cottage garden full of wild flowers and herbs. The lady who let us in – they have a glass sliding door, operated from inside until you have a key pass – seemed very stern and we both thought – oh dear! But she turned out to be charming - she explained that she had been a little alarmed by the sight of all our luggage as the taxi driver hauled it up the path – and had thought of asking him to take it right on upstairs to our room – there are no lifts and we were on the second floor!) We have a small but comfortable room, with the same dark green bedding we had at home for a while – so it felt quite ‘familiar’. The lady explained all about the hotel – in detail – and then pointed us in the right direction to find food.

The first restaurant we tried was Gepettos, an Italian bistro – but we were just too late for the last table – so we tried another Italian – slightly posher – along the parade (there was also an Indian and Chinese amongst the dozen or so shops here) and we had a delicious meal and fine wine with great service from a Slovakian man who had once visited an aunt in Canterbury! By the time we crashed into bed we were quite weary – it’s surprising how tired you can get just sitting on a train.