The Joys of Train Travel

We have had a wonderful time experiencing slow touring between Wangaratta and Sydney, visiting family. It’s an 8hr journey, with a rather slow section between Cootamundra and Harden as the train meanders through the quiet countryside of southern NSW. We passed through a rural landscape that in parts could be English, with weeping willows along the streams and hawthorn bushes among the open pastures, gum trees were scattered throughout. A top speed of 130kph is only achieved on the Murray River floodplains close to the Victoria/NSW border. It’s time to read a book or just simply gaze out the window and enjoy the quiet rural landscape. I was looking for birds. We enjoyed the numerous train stops at stations to collect or drop off passengers. People with their luggage and anxious faces saying goodbye to family or friends they seem to switch gear and relax into their seats, time to use social media, read a book or just chat to a stranger in the next seat.

We usually take the car on the Hume Freeway to Sydney with the endless trucks, this much more pleasant.

The plains near Goulburn, NSW are almost entirely without tree cover having been cleared by early European settlers in the early 1820s. This photo shows part of an old ancestral lake bed (part of the Lake George system) occupied by sheep now.

The train rolls on through quiet diverse landscapes of dry eucualypt woodland and farm land highly modified for cropping or grazing sheep and cattle.

Try train travel sometime, we were lucky enough on the daylight service to have plenty of empty seats. This service is called the NSW Trainlink XPT. Our train was nearly 50yrs old but it’s very comfortable.

If you have the time take the train and leave the car at home. Slow life down for a short while and relax.

Our XPT at Sydney Central Station

Typical NSW landscapes