Wanderung 20

Australian Walkabout

May - June 2009

Tuesday, June 9th, Morning in Canberra and Train Trip from Canberra to Sydney.

Bob:

Karen of course, had to work, and she went off to work quite early. We had a leisurely breakfast and debated whether to attempt another outing, but decided to relax for a while before taking the evening train to Sydney as we anticipated the entire evening and then a full next day on the train. We used the morning to catch up on our journals, and then took a walk around the neighborhood for an hour or so just to explore a bit. We were rewarded by seeing a flock of yellow-crested cockatoos up close and personal, so to speak. I managed to get a couple of pictures as they swooped around us and that was a lot of fun

Working our way around to a neighborhood shopping center, we found a much larger complex of shops, stores, and restaurants than we had expected. One restaurant served some nice-looking pasta dishes, so Monika had the noodles with a cream sauce while I had some riggatoni with a Bolognese sauce. Finding a used book store, we decided to drive back with the car, drop off some of the books we had read, shop at the Aldi, and fill up the car while we were at it. Fortunately, with the GPS I found a shortcut back to Karen's place that only took about 10 minutes, so we were back to the shopping center in practically no time. It took a while to do the shopping and errands, of course, but we were still back to Karen's place in time to pack up and say good-bye to Bentley and Button. I found it surprisingly difficult to say good-bye to the dogs. In retrospect, I think that was because Karen understood our Grand Plan (such as it was!) to see as much as we could of Australia, but there was no way to explain to the dogs why we had to leave.

Monika:

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the trees outside of our window. But since Karen had to work today, we kept quiet until she had left and then got up and had breakfast. We then settled back, listening to the radio and writing in the journal. By 11:00 we thought we might do something more ambitious and try to find a food store. Our local map that had little shopping cart icons where food stores were supposedly located, so we set off walking. Unfortunately, the icons were the same for any food store ranging from a 7-11 type of convenience store to a huge supermarket. So all in all, we walked for about 30 minutes before we finally found a really nice mall....well it probably would have been only 20 minutes but there cockatoos and gallahs to be photographed along the way. The yellow-crested cockatoos were especially fun. They are gorgeous when they fly, all white with yellow only in their crest and on their wings. But boy are they noisy!!! But Bob finally got a great picture of a flying cockatoo, so we could walk on, only to be stopped by three gallahs sitting across the road. These parrot type birds have pink chests and backs and are grey otherwise. Again we stopped for pictures.

At the mall we found a Woolworth but also an Aldi. In addition, there was a new and used bookstore that was just trying to get started and an Italian "eat-in" or "take-away" restaurant. By now it was lunchtime, so we decided to eat in. We also decided to come back with the car, to fill it up and get some groceries. In addition, we thought we might drop off the books we had finished reading and maybe get a new one. So back we walked. Looking at the GPS, Bob found out that by using some of the pedestrian paths that seemed to be everywhere we could get back in about 5 minutes. Back at Karen's place we grabbed our old books and headed back to the mall. At Aldi we picked up some licorice for ourselves and flowers for Karen. The used bookstore was delighted with our books and let us have a new one, and the car was happy to be filled up.

Bob:

Karen arrived on the dot and drove us to the train station before continuing on with her busy day. Our train left on time, but unfortunately since we were near the Winter Solstice for Australia it got dark around 5:00 p.m. and we didn't see much of the countryside before the night closed down on us. Still, we had picked up a good book when we dropped off our old ones at the used book store, and we happily read our new acquisition as we sped through the night toward Sydney.

Monika:

Back home we packed and by 2:00 P.M. Karen came to take us to the train station. We said good bye to the boys; I knew, we would really miss those two little guys! We said an even sadder good buy (or 'hoo-roo') to Karen and then settled in to wait for the train.

Bob:

Arriving in Sydney later that evening, we trundled our wheelies a couple of blocks over to the Sydney Central Hotel, an old but clean hotel just a block down from the Travelodge on Wentworth that we had stayed at the beginning of the trip.

Monika:

The train came around 5 and by then it had gotten dark. We started reading our new book and had our evening sandwiches on the train. In Sydney we pulled our luggage three blocks to the Sydney Central hotel. It was an older hotel with small rooms, but it was clean had nice showers and was a place to put our weary heads.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Australian Walkabout Epilog

May 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
June 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

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