It was another weekend, and we had run out of plan. We had planned to start going out of Sydney now. Though we have a lot to see in Sydney itself, we can keep them as fillers and start going for long ones now.
To begin with, I was planning to start with one day trips, to places where we can reach with a 2-3 hour travel and then, spend a day there and come back home by late evening. That will give a feel of the places outside Sydney in terms of expenses and food. That is, if I can see that in an outer area is a problem for vegetarian food; I will have to plan for either for packing food or take a self contained cottages.
We had Blue mountain as the first pick, and we didn’t bother to check for others at all ! Checking the weather, the Mercury level was still giving us a ‘negative’ answer ! But it was too late by the time we dropped Blue Mountains. Else, this place is an hour from Sydney and the train will pass through Parramatta.
We spotted a diesel locomotive train in our of our leaflets, which takes us for a day tour leaving Sydney Central in the morning and reaches back by evening. The journey is the attraction here – the route passes through the Royal National Park, a cliff and seashore to Wollongong and then climbs a hill to reach the destination, Robertson ! It just reaches there stays 2 hours, and comes back. But by the time we started chasing it, the offices were closed. As it was a private rail, none know about it in the City Rail office ! Again, it runs only on Wednesdays and Sundays. The tour costs A$85 pp. So, we got Saturday free to plan( *understood* free to sleep too) !
There goes the filler concept – this is where the remaining spots in Sydney comes! We planned for an IMAX experience, and while going to the city planned to check for more information about the Cockatoo run( that is the touring rail’s name).
Took a return ticket to Town Hall station, got down at the Central for more information ( but I can’t go out of the station as the return tickets does not allow breaking the journey, unless for changing trains). The rail staff had no clue about this rail. But they gave me another valuable information. The normal trains go through that route to the same destination, and it costs just 18 bucks for a same day return! Then, we are paying the extra 70 bucks for just the diesel experience( which we get in India without any choice) ! The normal trains also takes the 2 hours plus, and we will have the advantage of travelling free than depending on this train which will wait at the destination for 40 mins for shopping and lunch, before it starts its journey back.
Walking to the Darling harbour from Town Hall, the cloudy sky started a light& shade show with the Sun and the clouds! I will say it was the best, better than the IMAX ! The sky was dark, and suddenly we found only the skyscrapers behind us lit by the Orange Sun rays! As the Sun went down, it gave a beautiful backlit sky ! And whoever had a camera or a camcorder were copying it into the celluloid. But, I have seen the best shows of nature only when I forget to take my SLR. Today was no exceptionL !
IMAX, I had my first experience of a 3D film in my life and Krithi, it was her first IMAX experience! A show costs A$17( for 3D and 16 for 2D), and you will get a A$27 if you can see two shows one after the other !
For Sunday, we decided to give a try to take the normal train and see what can see ! We chose Wollongong, a spot on the way which is a coastal spot. It was just a 1hr 40 min. journey, and the trains left Central every hour. We started by 11 from home to take the 11:44 train starting from Central. We took a direct ticket from Parramatta and rushed into the local train just ready to depart. It was as usual slow. It dropped us at the central station by 11:38 at platform 6. We have to see which platform our trains for Wollongong depart. Each platform/ the escalator to the platform will have a TV displaying only the routes of the trains departing from that platform. Nowhere can you get the big pictureL ! So we did a running to the main board to check with the information, and ran to platform 14, the train was just about to close its doors!
As a precaution for the first journey, we had taken a flask full coffee and some sandwiches! The train was slow but it was not stopping in any of the local stations! It went in to a tunnel after Waterfall station, and there we go…. ! It was full of trees, dominated by Eucalyptus (now we know why Koala is so choosy, and may be why Australia is very dry)!
The train stopped at one or two stations, and was moving faster than ever before! It was going through a tunnel every 10 minutes! There were a couple of bridges too, very old ones! We exited a tunnel and down some 200-300 meters was a beach! We were on the edge of a sea cliff ! It was greenery around us, and filtering through the woods was the glittering sun rays resulting from the reflection of the beach! It took a turn through the side of the next hill to go much closer to the beach, and at a point, the sea was just below us down the hill! I would say it was beautiful!
It was travelling through the coast at some distance – the greenery in between slowly tuning in to roads, houses, shops and all. It approached small stations every 5-10 mins. A very useful fact I noticed was a board with the next station name on it, at the end of platform for each station.
It dropped us at Wollongong by around 1:20. We walked with no plans ahead. All we know is, we had to take a train back by evening. We know there is a beach there, and there is a Buddhist temple too! That latter is been told as the biggest in Southern hemisphere!
We had a problem with my bag getting wet with the coffee leaking from our new flask, just bought a day ago! We cleaned up the mess, but some of our travel books had already gone for a toss! Foreign vacuum flask, ehJ !
We found a shopping mall there, as good as one we could find in Sydney! We spotted the food court and had Pizza( this looks better, at least you get some pizzas all over the country. Thanks to Roman !). A long walk to the beach, and spent sometime walking through the rocks and that was it. We had to cancel the Buddha temple plan as the last bus was also gone by 3 (we realised that it is far and there are only buses once in 2 hours) !
That was all we could do that day, so it was at the end of the day just as good as the train journey! We returned by 4:30 train, promising we will be right back :) !
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