Thursday( 26th January for late blog readers ) was Australia Day , celebrating 253 years ago when Captain Cook arrived . Ok! not all the current inhabitants are celebrating , but they are now in a minority . Their community in Alice Springs has even less to rejoice, as alcohol has just been severely restricted ; following exceptional violence . It took the Captain two years to arrive , albeit via New Zealand . We now know how it feels to go to extraordinary lengths to get here; and we were only travelling across a bit of the continent, from Melbourne !
“Let’s take the train , it will be an experience “; and it was , but for reasons we were not expecting . We knew the Intercity to Sydney stopped at 19 stations and scheduled to take 11 hours; not our concept of intercity . Ours however was 4 hours late in arriving into Sydney; the story unfolds .
Firstly there was the ludicrous step of having to check in our large cases. I had read this on the ticket , but assumed it applied to outsized items . It also said the check in closed half hour before departure . This was becoming more like air travel , but without any of the efficiency. The other restriction , now rigorously enforced ,was that weight was limited to 20 KG per case . The baggage handlers were clearly not of the same breed as sheep shearers. Our cases were 22kg; so it was out with our standby folding case. As a final insult , it seemed that these baggage rules had only been applied to us, and anyway there was plenty of spare storage capacity in each carriage .
Tannoy…” The train leaving from platform 1 ( ours ) will be late due to the late arrival of the inbound train “ A frequent passenger commented that it is always late . Quick maths deduced that as there were two trains per day , each scheduled for 11hours ; so without spare trains , any delays would be cumulative. Ours left 1.5 hours late due to the theft of signalling wire and the need to expel runaway children ; now how did they get on in the first place ? Our fellow passenger commented that that was just the current excuse from their standby list .
We alighted at Wangarratta , ( love the name ! ) , to spend a few days with the rellies . We rejoined , and yes this was also 1.5 hours late . Clearly in the intervening days it hadn’t managed to catch up . The excuse this was time was , as to the high temperature , speed restrictions were in force. As a reminder , this bit of Australia was unseasonably COLD . I suppose in a normal summer the train never arrives . Still we set of full of optimism that they would try to makeup time. Australia is a federation of states who’s cooperation does not extend to train crews . They all changed, including the contents of the buffet car , at the state boundary ; which fortunately was also a station . There seemed little urgency in this arcane practice .
The original railway engineer clearly had an aversion to tunnels and bridges , there was only one of each on the whole 866km. The landscape was undulating , visually attractive , but requiring continuous bends to navigate by train . No chance in making up time here. .
One hour to go and the train made an unscheduled stop , yes they were originally going to by -pass this last remaining station . Tannoy announcement “ Due to the presence of a self-harmer on the bridge ahead, this train will remain at the platform “. Passengers with nearby support , made a rapid exit along with any available taxis . Rumours swirled, apparently we were to be bused the remaining hour . The 300 or so passengers mostly alighted ; along with cases… thats a bit of a misnomer ! Generally milling ensued , not sure whether to abandon the safety of our train . Further advice from harassed train staff “ this train will NOT be going to Sydney “ . With no other activity however we generally drifted back on board. Train announcement “ body has been cleared from the line we will be shortly resuming journey” . Just as well , we had to go with the flow as there was no alternative as our mobiles were both nearly flat . We arrived at midnight , those 4 hours late . The advertising phrase came to mind “ let the train take the strain “ ! We will drive next time .
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