Melbourne to Sydney – XPT train – 10.5 hours

We left Melbourne heavily laden and in a rush to meet our 8.30 am train. For some reason, I was stupid enough to think that we could have bundled all our things onto a tram – which it soon became obvious we could not, given that it was also peak commuter time. Instead, we took the first and last taxi in Melbourne and made it to the station just in time.

With the light of our experience of the city, the passing scenery of Melbourne’s suburbs looked quite different to when we arrived; we saw many railside graffiti pieces, for example, which we now recognised the style and understood the context of. We were sad to leave Melbourne just as we had began to really settle in but we knew we were going to have to get used to being on the road again, so we tried our best to re-adjust as the suburbs began to melt into farmland.

Once we passed a town called Albury, the terrain became much more undulating and hilly – lush pastureland perforated with small man-made holes (‘dams’ in local terminology) to collect rainwater for the grazing animals. Because it was still early in the morning, or perhaps because our eyes were now more finely tuned, we glimpsed kangaroos and emus feeding among the long grass of some passing fields.

Further east, the terrain becomes more dry – shrubland and plains with small patches of isolated forest dotting the hilltops. The rocks, where they have been exposed by the elements, are the characteristic bright orange and crimson red that you see in the landscape paintings of local artists – when covered by foliage they appear a lush green or dry yellow.

As we approached Sydney, we passed straight into the path of a brewing storm. A deep mist absorbed the landscape for the next hour, cutting our visibility to only 30 metres or so. As we entered the storm cloud, the temperature in the carriage began to fall and I was wishing that I had packed my jumper in a more accessible place! Just as the rain clouds looked fit to burst, we pulled into Sydney’s Central Station. After yet another fracas with the bags, we ended up very glad that we had chosen a place to stay that was within walking distance of the station.

Sydney

We spent most of our time in Sydney un-packing, de-cluttering and re-packing the bags, leaving some stuff in the hostel box and posting other things home. Fortunately there was also some time in the evening to have a little explore. We found a great Malaysian restaurant (good preparation for Port Klang) where we ate some satay dishes and drank some cham (half coffee-half tea which actually tastes quite good) before heading to Darling Harbour for a walk. This is an unlovely part of the city full of conference centres, chain restaurants and large hotels clustered around the waterfront. Given the temperature, we had almost forgotten that it was only a week to Christmas, until we noticed a giant inflatable Santa climbing the nearby convention centre.

Our overnight train to Brisbane wasn’t scheduled to leave Sydney until 4 p.m., so we had some time the next day to take a quick trip to Manly Beach, a forty-minute ferry ride from Circular Quay. Taking the ferry to Manly gave us a fresh perspective of Sydney – the city’s suburbs appear to be laid out all along the coastline of both sides of the inlet, and many people travel to work by ferry, which I could immediately see the appeal of. The journey couldn’t be more different to the packed crush of the rush-hour commute on the Northern Line. Manly itself is a cosmopolitan seaside suburb, which feels removed enough from the city centre to maintain its own identity. We had a little bite to eat and then it was time to head straight back on the next ferry, to make sure that we didn’t miss the train!

Sydney to Brisbane – XPT train – 11 hours

Ah, the joy of an afternoon train! With our newly lightened bags we took a leisurely stroll into Central Station, quickly grabbing some reading material and a final good coffee before making our way onto the platform. The train left right on time, without much to report at the station except for a lonely Santa with a brown beard. As we passed the suburbs of Sydney for the last time and onto the towns of Hornsby and Fassifern, we felt the humidity rise as we entered an area full of lakes and swampy areas. There were also glimpses of Australian Pelicans flying in formation above the water. I decided that Nick Cave’s rendition of ‘Muddy Water’ would be an apt song to accompany the landscape rolling by, which subequently turned into a marathon listening session as Anna and I shared a pair of headphones, choosing songs that fit our mood and surroundings until long into the night.

At Maitland, we passed a grain depot site (one I was familiar with from my time with the wheat pricing), and also saw a large collection of shipping containers repurposed as storage sheds and offices. A little further on, the train slowed down as we approached an old railway car being renovated by a local rail enthusiasts’ society, and small home plots with burning bonfires that sizzled against the endless stretches of bush. As dusk set in we spotted mobs of kangaroos feasting on rail-side fields, seemingly undeterred by the train. As people began to settle in for the night, I plugged in my headphones and listened to Arcade Fire while the fields rolled on into the descending darkness…

The following morning aboard the train was brief – after a night of little sleep (ironically, a man in our carriage was thrown off the train and arrested at 4am for drunkenly singing ‘Silent Night’ at the top of his voice), we woke up with the rising sun to see the misty pastures of Queensland glowing yellow. We were able to digest a very quick round of raisin toast and a coffee before the train pulled in at Brisbane central at 5.30 am. The toast gave us just enough energy to haul all our bags off the train and get to the nearby YHA Brisbane Central where we would wait it out for the two days we had before our freighter was due to dock in port.

At the station we had just enough time to grab a quick coffee before boarding the train (we were told that, unlike America’s Amtrak, trains here tend to leave on time and the doors shut promptly at 30 seconds prior to departure). We made it on with five minutes to spare and the train was pretty full but clean and comfortable and we rather looked forward to relaxing for the next 11 hours. The Melbourne-Sydney/Sydney-Melbourne trains are nearly always full, thanks in part to the very reasonable ticket prices, which are kept deliberately low as part of some sort of ‘visit Sydney’ promotion. It seems to have worked, as several of our fellow passengers, who usually fly the distance, admitted that they have begun to take the train instead to save time and money. The hours travelled may be longer but the cutting out of airport time and transfers, in combination with the more relaxed atmosphere, mean that they actually get more work done on the train.

It didn’t take long before we had left the city and its surrounding suburbs behind and were passing green and rocky farmland, complete with wind farms, cows, sheep and horses. It could almost have been England (especially when it was announced that Devonshire Cream Teas were now being served), except for the surprising skinniness of the cows and the passing blurs of Cockatoos and Galahs. The countryside continued to whizz by, in between brief stops at quaint country stations such as Cootamundra, Wagga Wagga and Henty. Being late Spring, the Yarrow was in full flower, turning the fields a brilliant yellow and giving the landscape a dusting of the idyllic.

The view wasn’t holding the attention of all the other passengers however – especially not the two young children on the seat in front of us who were heading back to Melbourne after visiting their Grandma near Sydney. For them, fun was to be found in flipping the seat rest covers over from their seat to ours and clambering over and under the seat-backs to join us so that we could play dinosaurs. As the friendship grew, so too did the games and Alex left the train covered in dinosaur and train stickers while I was taught how to ‘bake’ on a pink Nintendo DS. We also became friendly with the guy sitting adjacent to us who took over the entertainment duties when we got tired – by the end of the trip he had become known as ‘Duckie Man’, which was shouted by the kids through the carriage very loudly, in case there was anyone who might not have yet heard yet. In return for giving their mum some time to read her book, she gave us some very good tips to get us started in Melbourne (plus some helpful contact numbers) and before long, the city itself was on the horizon and we were slowly snaking around to meet it.

After waving goodbye to the kids, who also gave us a parting present of some of the best shiny heart stickers in their collection, we dragged our bags out of Southern Cross station to the very conveniently located Melbourne Central YHA and looked forward to a shower and bed, falling asleep to the ‘ding’ of the tram bells going by.

As it happens, we didn’t feel much nostalgia after the boat had disappeared from our sight and instead focused our attention on reacquainting ourselves with a life where we were once again responsible for ourselves and our own explorations. The hostel was a good place to start, as it was also home to an archaeological dig site. Ours was one of a number of rooms which encircled the open space of the dig itself, where old drains, china and other fragments from the daily lives of the first European settlers are still being unearthed. The Rocks area surrounding us housed more of this sort of thing and was an interesting space in own right. As the entire Rocks area and most of the older buildings are owned by the council, the rent is cheap and the area plays host to a huge range of galleries, street art installations ‘pop-up’ shops (which change as often as once a month) and social spaces, as well as the Rocks Discovery Museum. In the 1970s – check dates there was a proposal by a large consortium of property developers to ‘modernise’ The Rocks by bulldozing the entire area and erecting yet more skyscrapers, which the cash-strapped council opted to agree to. Of course, being the dawn of the era of privatisation, the people living and working in The Rocks, mainly dock workers and the impoverished, were not involved in the decision at all, despite the land and most of the buildings being under public ownership. In stark contrast to the fate of Canary Wharf or Elephant and Castle, the Federation of Master Builders was successfully able to boycott the demolition works by putting ‘green bans’ on all the companies involved in the buyout attempt, and some of the last surviving historic neighbourhoods in Sydney are only preserved today because of their successful protest efforts. In the thirty years hence the old residents have slowly left the area, mainly due to old buildings being deemed unsafe and subtle ‘rezoning’ by the council, but the architecture is at least preserved and in contrast to the original plans, the public is able to benefit from a subsidised space for local creatives to make and exhibit their work.

We didn’t venture into the CBD much and aside from the odd excursion, for example to post some parcels home, preferred to watch it from the fringes of the harbourside and the hostel’s roof terrace, where plenty of insight could be gleaned if you looked hard enough – especially on the rooftops:

There were quirky art pop-up shops to explore and an innovative local poetry group called the Red Room had a put on a display of an animated pop-up book, called the ‘Analogue Crusader’, at the old Customs House, which has been converted into a modern-looking library. We were also able to read a two-day old Guardian and some of the Australian newspapers to get back in touch with world events.

In other moments, we explored the beautiful (and free) botanic gardens, where we saw more fruit bats; attended a play at the Opera House (unsurprisingly, we couldn’t afford the opera); visited the Art Gallery of NSW, where we saw some interesting aboriginal sculptures, badly derivative early-settler art and an extremely neglected collection of Polynesian pottery at the back; and explored the ‘Art and About’ photographic festival offerings in Sydney’s Hyde Park. This was also where we heard, and subsequently glimpsed our first Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, which on first appearances looked rather like a barn owl while in flight and seemed just as uncomfortable as one might, perched on a city centre lamp post in the middle of the day. The bird’s shriek seemed prehistoric, and I have still heard nothing like it since. After about four days of exploration, we felt the time was right to find a more solid base for the next few months, and for this we decided we’d head to Melbourne. The Australian playwright David Williamson famously wrote, ‘No-one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life — it’s getting yourself a water frontage’, and not presently needing or desiring water frontage, Melbourne it had to be.

In the morning, after managing a few hours of restless sleep, we awoke to find everything eerily quiet and still. We reached for the curtains first, not quite sure what we were going to discover, to find this:

Overnight, the ship had voyaged through the rough waters to the sanctuary of Circular Quay in Sydney, where it finally became what it always promised to be, a ‘floating hotel’, with an unbeatable view. As far as first glimpses of Australia go, this one was pretty unique and certainly beat the usual nondescript tarmac welcome you receive at the airport! As we had arrived a day early, the ship was due to be docked here for 24 hours and we were allowed to stay for one last night on the boat, if we wished. Seeing as this time tomorrow we would be headed for the nearest youth hostel, we decided to make the most of the experience. To celebrate the spring sunshine, we began the morning with a game of tennis on the roof of the ship! It was probably the most surreal game I have ever experienced, given that the pint-sized court was floating in the water between the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the gleaming white sails of the Opera House. As the crowds on the Quay below began to swell, we decided it was time to rejoin the world again (after a quick breakfast looking across to the Opera House). It felt strange being able to walk straight down a flight of carpeted stairs onto Australian soil with no passport checks or scanners but somehow it also felt much more natural. By this time, Circular Quay was buzzing with its usual throng of tourists and techno-didgeridoo players, backed by thumping electronic soundtracks. Usually this is just the sort of thing I run away from at high speed, but having been in a surreal sort of ‘floating bubble’ for most of the last month, we both felt exhilarated just to be near cafés, bars, theatres and people we did not recognise once again. We bought some coffee and tea with actual milk (our first non-UHT in weeks) and walked a short distance to the botanic gardens where we sat on a hill, slowly adapting to the idea that this was the start of the next chapter of the journey, one where we would both have to find some work…