Up early to get to the Southern Cross train station about 7:30am and checked in bags for the 8:30am departure to Sydney. We bumped into a couple who had been on our tour of Melbourne’s City Watch House. Then we went to the WHSmith newsagent on the station. Both Noel and I had odd experiences with the cashier. I bought two bottles of water which were advertised on a “Two for x” deal. The cashier tried to charge me as though they were separate items so I queried it. She briefly glanced at her screen and said “Oh yes, two for x”. And Noel bought a few items including a map of Sydney. When we got on the train the receipt included a map but there was no map in the bag.

Before getting on the train we bought some breakfast which we had on the train.

We passed through some great placenames, my favourite being Wagga Wagga. The day passed quite well, lots of reading and Noel got supplies in every so often. 🙂

The journey was delayed a bit due to some faulty signals towards Sydney. Having set off from Melbourne at 8:30am we got in to Sydney just after 8pm. To put the distance in a UK perspective, it can take about 4.5hrs to get from London to Edinburgh compared to the timetabled 11hrs20mins for Melbourne-Sydney!

We needed to get to the airport to collect a rental car and debated about our intended train journey there. The departure boards were showing delays due to the faulty signals so instead we got a taxi after what turned out to be a long wait, so we might as well have tried for the train! Talk about stereotypes though – a man put his luggage down not far from our queue and started playing his didgeridoo!

We got to the rental car place sometime after 9pm and once we’d got sorted out we drove off to near Camden, 65km SW of Sydney. This was easier said than done! You’d think that at 10pm there would be no traffic problems – in fact, there were night-time roadworks which put an extra 30mins on our journey time. We finally rolled into our accommodation just before 11pm. Having had centipedes to contend with in the room most evenings at Warburton it was a pleasant relief not to find any wildlife in the room. Unless you count Noel… 😛 🙂

We were scheduled to have a flying lesson at 11am next day with Curtis Aviation.