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Saturday 6th February
Arrived Sydney on Thursday
evening but very few hotel rooms to be found - turns out there is a touring version of the
Edinburgh Military Tattoo in town with 20,000 (?) thousand seeing it every evening for
four nights. As a result, we decided to find our feet and then move straight on to
Melbourne.
Friday then, we achieved quite
a lot ..... but mainly, got wet, yes it's been raining in Sydney! Got the train into
town (and back successfully), got ourselves a trip around central Sydney on the MonoRail which
takes you about 25 minutes. It's all up in the air, about 10 metre above ground and consists
of a single beam on which four cars ride over - looking up at it from the street it hardly looks
able to support the weight but seems to work just fine, even if a bit crowded. Otherwise we
had enough of a glimpse of Central Sydney to know where to go when we return at the beginning of
March.
Today we're on the day train
to Melbourne and have just passed Wagga Wagga! (Not sure who named all the towns
around here but there are an awful lot with 'W's in them!). It's about 1400
now, the train left at 0730 and arrives in at about 1900 so we're just over half way.
Engines (two) are Diesel with about six cars. There are lots of electric trains around
Sydney, many of them double deckers, one of which we went into town on
yesterday.
We left Sydney in rain but
it's cleared up a bit and is now more like a reasonable day at home - bits of blue but not
many. Countryside is mostly rolling and we've passed from hills to flatter land with massive
grain silos and yards at all the stations. Merino sheep, beef cattle and one lot of diary
cattle are spread out fairly thinly over dryísh looking countryside. Grain fields
seem to be cut fairly high and occasionally undersown. The only straw I've seen stacked was
around the diary farm.
Trees have been fairly well
scattered all over, mostly gum trees and growing beside streams and dried out water couses.
We havn't seen any planting or organised forestry so far, maybe
later.
Towns we pass through seem
fairly similar to each other with wide roads and most of the houses one storied, on a decent
amount of ground - not so different from many of the smaller outlying towns in Southern
Africa. Train stations look rather like Tain station did 20 or 30 years
ago!
Plans at the moment are for a
few days in Melbourne, collect a camper van (Britx or Jucy? Still not decided!) and then head off
down to Hobart armed with Tony's excellent instructions on how to find Glen Dhu and other
suggestions for our week down there. Back to Melbourne then and a trip along the Great Ocean
road westwards and some visits to friends on the way before returning to
Sydney.
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