As remarked elsewhere, the final day of any of our excursions tends to be unremarkable. Inevitable, really. Take out the transit from hotel to airport, the hiatus between check-in and departure, the duration of the flight, disembarking in Townsville, Whitsunday Coast or Mackay and the hour or two it takes to get us back to Bowen and that's most of the day accounted for, thank you very much.
But from time to time there's something that intervenes along the way, which prevents us from working on some variation on "and then we went back home, and there wasn't much of interest en route."
In this case, it's the morning intersection of the dateline above and the location of the Sydney Hilton, with the front door opening onto George Street and an Anzac Day parade proceeding down the street you need to cross if you want to get from the hotel to Town Hall railway station.
It's not actually a major problem, since the station is underground and has a number of entrances, including one in the Galeries Victoria, right next door to the Hilton. Straightforward.
Not being a city person this possibility hadn't occurred to me when the penny dropped and I set out to check the route the parade would take. Assuming we couldn't cross George Street there were other options, all of which involved a bit more walking, but no major dramas. The research, however, suggested there were significant logistical issues involved in staging the march, and what we found once we'd checked out of the hotel reinforced that point.
From around nine you couldn't avoid an awareness of the procession, with the sound of brass bands reaching the thirty-fourth floor, but in the foyer, as I checked out, it was obvious there was a large crowd on the footpath, though I reckoned we'd still be able to pass around the back of the spectators on our way to the entrance to the station, which wad on the George Street rather than the Pitt Street side of the Galeries.
Madam didn't agree, wanted a quick squiz at the parade, and returned with news that we definitely couldn't get through that way. Strange. As I stood guarding the carry on baggage I could've sworn there were people making their way along the footpath behind the spectators.
Anyway, we ended up heading to Pitt Street, entering the Galeries from that side and covering what might have been as much as an extra two hundred metres. Possibly only a hundred, no big issue.