All Aboard!
The body clock kicked in with the regular 4:30 wake-up and I was out of bed looking forward to the prospects on offer feeling good. Predictably a spanner was immediately lodged in the works. Once the laptop powered up I was ready to start tapping out the details of Our Journey So Far but I checked the email while I boiled the jug, and was hit with a flurry of messages with subjects like R.I.P. Richie Hayward.
This wasn't entirely unexpected news. Liver cancer, a case of pneumonia, reports that doctors weren't sure what was happening with Richie's lungs, the fact that I'd lost both parents to pneumonia and reports that suggested the case was too severe to risk moving the patient to a larger hospital meant that I wasn't confident he'd be back in the drummer's seat for Little Feat.
Still, even when developments don't give you much hope, hope you do.
With the email scanned, I started a preliminary draft of the R.I.P. section of The Music Pages and sent off part of it to the Hoy Hoy mailing list while Madam showered, then took my turn in the Rain Room before we set out on a time-killing expedition. The train wasn’t departing until 2:55 and with the morning to be disposed of before we checked in it made sense to cut the next six hours into chunks on either side of checking out of the overnight accommodation.
In any case Madam wanted to give the shutter finger a workout and there were iconic structures and a magnificent waterway close to Circular Quay, so by seven-thirty we were off to Central, where Platform 17 was the ticket if we wanted to go past Town Hall and Wynyard to The Rocks by way of Circular Quay. There’s no a way of legally alighting from the train if you opt to travel straight on from Wynyard until you're across The Coat-hanger, so Circular Quay was the obvious jumping-off point.
A lengthy wander with frequent stops took us under the Coat-hanger's southern pylon, by which time Madam realized the camera battery needed a recharge as checkout time loomed, so we made our way back to Great Southern, arriving about 9:15.
With the battery in charge mode we made a few adjustments to the luggage and were downstairs checking out around 9:45 when the rush set in. With two large suitcases and the on the train hand luggage safely stowed in the Cloak Room we set out on Stage Two of Operation Time-killer.
There’s limited room in sleeper cabins, and there was no way two big suitcases were going to fit. Well, they could, but options for movement would be almost nonexistent. That meant packing a bag with clothing and underwear for three or four days, and we'd settled on a change of good clothes each (for the Restaurant and Club Car), along with something for the cabin. Whether that would do remained to be seen, as the monkey remarked while leaving the doorstep.
With four hours until we needed to be back at Central (they ask you to be checked in by 1:55) Madam's research skills came to the fore. She'd visited the Sydney Fish Market on an earlier visit, and online exploration produced a voucher that cut the price of a $9 day pass on the light rail to $6 (just slightly more than the cost of a return ticket to Lindfield, giving us the chance of unlimited travel on the line without the risk of being slugged for extra expenditure.
The tram line wasn't hard to find, and we made our way to Capitol Square, where I sighted the Haymarket Harry's Cafe de Wheels. That gave me the chance to locate the Fabulous Nudes tribute to said institution on the iPod, a departure from the all Feat all day playlist, but one that fitted, given the subject matter. The droll vocal from Johnny Topper would probably have gone down well with Mr Hayward and band-mates. Not quite Texas Rose Cafe, but not a million miles away.
The light rail trip to Lindfield and back is, as you'd expect, a mixed bag as far as the scenic side of things is concerned, but harbour-side views across the water made up for the predictable inner city along the rail line eyesores, and once we'd made our way into the Fish Markets I had no qualms about the chosen time killer, and that was before the food factor kicked in.
We took ourselves around the perimeter, passing a couple of eateries I would've been happy to stop at, turning left at the second and diverting into one of the large retail outlets where I would've paused to take a photo of Alaskan King Crab (a touch under $50/kilo) to prove I wasn't hallucinating, but crowd and space constraints meant I gave the concept the flick pass.
But if that was crowded, we hadn't seen anything yet.
The waterfront arcade offered more space in the shared walkways but once you veered into the retail outlets there was the same population density, though there were places to sit and consumee what you've bought so the crowding wasn't quite as severe once you'd negotiated a purchase.
We took a loop around while Madam scoped out the sashimi, and once that had been done and the relevant decisions almost made, we repaired to the wine outlet, where a bottle of 2008 Devils Corner Riesling set us back a reasonable $23 and plastic takeaway glasses were $2 each.
In the end we chose Peter's for a dozen large Sydney rock oysters ($16) and tuna and salmon sashimi ($9.80 with chopsticks and soy sauce). The oysters looked better at the other place, but Peter's had seating. Sashimi involved queueing, and the line contained numbers of non-Japanese Asians and approximations of the Average Aussie.
The oysters were excellent, so I was forced to go back for another six, and the tuna finished a short half head in front of the salmon in the Sashimi Stakes. The Riesling was sublime, not quite the same slaty citrus notes in Clare and Eden Valley Riesling, but the wine, being Tasmanian and subsequently from a much cooler climate was never going to be quite in that style. I like Tasmanian Riesling, would buy more if it was easier to find and this one was a perfect match for the oysters.
I was on my second serve when I recalled that Mr Hayward's drum kit had regularly featured a stuffer cartoon Tasmanian devil, a stroke of serendipity that hadn't influenced the buying decision but provided an uplifting antidote to the coincidence of our arrival at the Markets with Richie's only lead vocal credit turning up on the iPod playlist.
After lunch the crowd in the arcade was growing since it was getting towards lunch time for normal people, so we obviously needed to be somewhere else and a perfectly good somewhere else lay a few stops along the tram line at Darling Harbour.
We alighted at the Convention Centre, and strolled around the Maritime Museum (which has duly been added to Hughesy's list of things I need to take a proper look at), noting a Vampire class destroyer, an Oberon class submarine and smaller craft including the Krait and a Vietnamese refugee boat, all of which were open for (paid) inspection.
The previous day's walk through the CBD brought unfavourable comparisons to downtown Melbourne’s back alleys and interesting nooks and crannies. While Sydney may have a partial equivalent around Paddington or elsewhere it wasn't in evidence anywhere we'd been. Melbourne, however, has nothing to compare to the Harbour and we were lucky enough to catch it on a magnificent day under blue skies we'd apparently brought with us.
By one-fifteen we were back collecting the luggage from the Great Southern and from there it was an increasingly familiar five minute walk to Central, where the check-in process proceeded as a well-oiled machine should. After forty years you'd expect things to be pretty much down pat, and they certainly seem to be.
Given the length of the train (twenty-five carriages in all) it starts off in two sections for boarding purposes and once were ensconced in Gold Class Car F Berths 7&8 and unpacked we had time to gather our thoughts while the front section of the train (ours) was shunted onto the rear end (the cheap seats) and receive briefings about the cabin, its features (particularly the bathroom and toilet facilities) and matters like meal times.
For the uninitiated, Gold Class meals on the Indian Pacific and The Ghan operate in two shifts, Red (early) and Blue (late) and meal times aren't consistent over the journey. They don't serve meals while the train's in a station and they don't split the eating bit into before and after options (difficult when you're there for two or three hours). That means that one option would have you dining late after Adelaide while the other has breakfasts rather earlier than you may prefer.
Day One going west, for example, had the Red Service at 6:00 with Blue two hours later. We'd gone the Blue but as I wrote this part of the travelogue heading out of Broken Hill, the Red Service had just been called (8:30 CST). Subsequent comments from people with a Red ticket suggested that staff tended to hurry you through your meal to make room for the other lot.
The first part of the run out of Sydney took us through Redfern and suburbs that presented an urban landscape much like the outskirts of any major city. Sydney's Summer Hill and Burswood are probably close to interchangeable with Brisbane's Yerongpilly and Loganlea and there are probably similar examples that could be cited for Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
From where we were sitting (looking south) there was nothing at Homebush to indicate the area had been warming up for the Olympics ten years previously, though blocks of units on the other side may well have been the Olympic Village. By 3:47 we were passing a rail yard at Clyde and discovering that the westering sun, as it sank towards the horizon, was going to be a real headache.
After a slow start we were noticeably gathering speed at Pendle Hill and by Blacktown we weren't exactly motoring but were definitely going places at a speed sufficient to reduce the Doonside station sign to an almost unreadable blur. On the outskirts of Penrith we were starting to come across patches of scrub, though there was plenty of urban sprawl in evidence as well.
After crossing the Nepean River and passing Emu Plains a sharp left hand turn started us onto the climb over the Blue Mountains, reducing the speed but taking the train to heights that provided extensive backward vistas remarkably quickly. As the climb continued the sun cut in and out each time the track twisted or turned through the hills. Looking out, cliffs that blocked the westward progress of the early settlers were quite obvious, though the rail track cheats by using tunnels to get through rather than over, the escarpments. Around 5:15 a sign indicated the presence of a Grandview Hotel, a reminder of home, but as we hit Katoomba darkness was upon us and that was it as far as viewing the scenery was concerned.
Since that was the case I took a wander towards the Club Car, passing through the Restaurant Car where the Red Service were onto their entrees. The Club Car was heavily populated as well, and we made our way there for the 6:30 Welcome Reception, where we were greeted with a complimentary glass of bubbles and evidence that, had we arrived earlier and downed the first while stragglers were making their way to the rendezvous, a second may well have been on offer.
The briefing covered most of the obvious bases and contained a fair bit of promotion regarding The Ghan and associated trips operated by Great Southern Rail, but it was over just after seven, and with no further freebies on offer while we were on the edge of a group that had seemingly settled well in for the next hour, so it was back to the cabin and an assault on the travelogue backlog before we were called for dinner at eight.
Eight had passed and we were about to check things out when the announcement arrived, so while the vanguard beat us to the Club Car we were among the first seated at the Tucker Trough.
Menus arrived with extreme rapidity as introduction were made across our table. The elderly couple opposite were, we learned, from Mittagong and had a son now based in Toowoomba, would take a drink if they hadn't already had their own happy hour and there were enough mutual interests to provide a flow of conversation through the rest of the evening's proceedings.
As far as the dinner menu goes, you're looking at three courses, with a couple of options for entree and dessert and four for the main (one of them vegetarian). Initial entree options were a prawn bruschetta or a curry based soup, the non-vegetarian mains covered beef, Atlantic salmon and chicken while for dessert you could have your cheese on a platter or in a cake. Serving sizes were adequate though unlikely to satisfy a hearty eater, but I guess it's a matter of looking after the majority rather than catering for quantity. Fair enough, that was what I'd expected.
Fortunately, that attitude doesn't extend to the wine list, which treads well clear of predictable offerings from the major chains. I had a glass of Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc with the entree and a Mr Riggs The Rigger Shiraz with the main, dragging it out long enough to cover the cheese platter as well. Meals good, wines a cut above the average at reasonable pub or restaurant prices and I returned to the cabin a happy camper.
In our absence the beds had been made up and, given the hour, the lack of anything visible outside and general tiredness it was a case of straight to bed, though both of us took a while to nod off in our respective bunks.