Skip to main content

Home tests

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick, then slept in until nine. I still felt bad. Uh oh. I ruled myself out of doing anything today except going home. Straight home.

Fortunately, Alex agreed with me, so after a breakfast in the apartment we set off back to Sydney. 

I closed my eyes and listened through headphones most of the way, with B doing the driving. We know this route intimately. 

The only things of note along the way is that Lake George has water. Not full by any means, but not as empty as on the last few trips. 


Then, after Menangle, on my favourite section where the railway runs through the grassy hills, I spotted the daily Xplorer rail car set on its way to Canberra.



After reaching home and unpacking the car I drove off to the Sutherland covid-19 testing clinic. It is almost certainly not covid, but it is also important to be sure, especially after visiting so many locations.

It is also scary that, despite all the precautions, I managed to catch something that is probably less contagious than SARS-COV-2. 

I really enjoyed this drive around Central Western NSW. There were some wonderful gardens, fascinating museums and history and some excellent scenery along the way. 

Still, I do wonder if we should be travelling right now. Even back in Sydney I realise that we need to keep out of those areas other states have designated as "hotspots" so that we do not exclude ourselves from further travel, let alone risk getting sick.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The little Jedi of Kinosaki Onsen

A long time ago in a land far, far away. That's what it felt like as we walked the streets of Kinosaki Onsen dressed in our yukatas, the clop-clop of wooden getas sounding in the air. In his robes Alex looked the spitting image of a young Jedi padawan, all that was missing was the lightsaber. Incidently, Padawan is a district of Kuching in Malaysia. The town was so far back in time that my 4G router couldn't get a signal, hence the lack of an update. Plus I was feeling a little under the weather. There can be few better places to rest than Kinosaki Onsen. We dragged our luggage on the Midosuji subway to Umeda, then barely caught the Ltd Exp Hamakaze in time. An older Japanese train it lacked a food service or vending machines, leading to big issues. Alex was hungry for breakfast. B and I had eaten slices of Kobe cheesecake for breakfast, but Alex didn't like it. As we raced past the huge Akashi bridge Alex was pleading for food and drink. The kind ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Springs, castles and the end of the line

I am never happy to stop before the end of the line. It irritates me to know that there is still somewhere unexplored lying ahead. So when I only got as far as Gujo Hachiman on the Nagaragawa Railway last year I knew I needed to return for more. Especially as this private third sector railway is, by its very nature, always at threat of closure due to low patronage. But did Gujo Hachiman deserve another visit? Sure it's a nice enough town, but had we missed out on enough last time to return? Mum's trip provided the excuse. I originally planned the Oito line, which wI'll be partly closed when the Shinkansen line is extended to Kanazawa. However, when I thought of special places in Japan that deserved to be shared Gujo Hachiman was at the top of the list. Before we could go anywhere Mum needed her coffee. There was a Tully's Coffee opposite the hotel entrance, so I parked her there while I booked our seat reservations. Mum got her fast train ride on a ...
4 comments
Read more

The Carlingford Line

We close the year and the decade with a local adventure to mark the closure of a railway line. On the January 5, 2020, the Carlingford Line from Clyde will close to be partially replaced by the Parramatta Light Rail. This is Sydney's quietest line, a single track branch for most of its length from the industrial centre of Clyde to the northwestern suburb of Carlingford. According to Wikipedia, power supply and signalling issues mean that only a single four car train can utilise the line at a time. Newer Sydney trains run in fixed eight car configurations. This will be the first and last time I traverse the Carlingford Line in its current configuration. The weather of the day is certainly appropriate for an ending, the brown smoke haze lending an apocalyptic air to proceedings. I drive to Padstow and catch the T8 line to Central, followed by the T1 towards Parramatta and Penrith. The historic homes of the Inner West give way to industrial complexes, rail storage yards and t...
4 comments
Read more