Stony Point to Kuranda: Part 3

Sydney to Brisbane. What a journey.  I'd better start off by noting though that the train had seen better days (probably better decades) and it only went as far as Casino.  The two hour bus ride then turned into a 3 hour bus ride as I'd forgotten the 1-hour time zone change at the Queensland border.


But it was a great ride.  Crossing the Hawkesbury River and then passing all the oyster beds just North of Sydney really is spectacular.    Even in Cairns all the sea-food shops were advertising "Sydney Rock Oysters".  Then the view around Gloucester was amazing.  The wikipedia entry of "a town in dairy and beef cattle country, is located in Mid-Coast Council, within the Manning district on the Mid North Coast of the state of New South Wales, Australia." doesn't sound too exciting, but "Base camp for Barrington Tops" sounds a bit better.  Barrington Tops is part of a World Heritage site (Gondwana Rainforests of Australia) that goes all the way into Queensland.   It's amazing that a place just North of Sydney has  "subtropical rainforests in the gullies to subalpine and alpine regions on the mountain peaks."



At this point I was sitting next to an elderly man.  He said hello as he sat down and then pointedly told me that he was going to look out the window and not chat.  Then he proceeded to chat all the rest of the way to Casino.  He told me that he was visiting his friend, who was 75 and had just had a child out of wedlock.  Apparently he was having it tough.  He didn't have any money. He was ill.  He wanted to be back in Thailand.

I had expected that the trains would be mostly empty.  There are plenty of flights between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  However, the trains were relatively full.  Second class seemed to be backpackers and parents with children.  First class seemed to be "my doctor insisted that I don't fly", but all these elderly people were very chatty.  The man on one side was complaining that his wife had left him.  The two women behind were enthusiastically discussing the deaths of their husbands.  It was very surreal.

We arrived into Brisbane at night and I discovered that it really is like an overgrown country town -- particularly on a Tuesday evening.