“Where are you headed to?”, a fellow traveller on a Sydney train inquired, marvelling at our voluminous luggage. “Canberra is boring! “, he replied when we disclosed our destination. “Good”, I muttered, rather to myself, “sounds perfect”.
Our life has been mostly on the road for the past months. Pitching our tent just to pack it all up again the next day has become as normal as checking in and out of apartments. After 5000 kilometres of road-tripping New Zealand (and Chile before that) we were looking forward to a rather sedentary lifestyle in Australia. We decided to forgo all the famously beautiful spots along the Gold Coast, the Great Barrier Reef, the tropical North as well as scenic Central Australia and limited our four-week stay to Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne. Here is what we learned.
To resolve a long dispute over whether Sydney or Melbourne should become Australia’s capital, a new settlement was founded out in the sticks, subsequently known as Canberra, the Bush Capital. Representational buildings and monuments of all sorts surrounded by a wide range of embassies in a spacious, leafy suburban-style settlement garnished with cockatoos and kangaroos make for a perfect backdrop for international encounters. After our four-hour train-ride from Sydney, we were given the most warm and friendly welcome at the Austrian Embassy. Elisabeth, the ambassador, showed us our guest apartment and invited us to have brunch with her and her family the next morning. We thoroughly enjoyed the company of these hospitable people as well as the nice autumn weather in Canberra. Finally, we even found good Australian beer at the Bent Spoke brewery downtown.
The reason we came to Canberra, however, was that the embassy invited Anna to play a solo concert on their premises. In addition, they invited a First Nation musician, didgeridoo player Joel Bulger to collaborate with Anna. Before the concert, Joel let me and my son try one of his smaller didgeridoos. Women, however, are not allowed to even touch a didgeridoo, Joel explained. The concert hall at the Austrian Embassy was packed when Anna played a selection of her solo pieces and Joel told the history of his instruments and demonstrated some music and the symbolism behind it. The highlight of the evening, however, was Anna and Joel improvising together. It was utterly mesmerising to hear two wind instruments from entirely different cultures play together, imitate each other, and create a unique sonic experience.
Whenever possible, we choose to travel by public transport, and our experience taking the train from Sydney to Canberra has been mostly positive (except for the fact that checked baggage may not exceed 20kg as opposed to ANY international airline baggage policy, and yes, 20.7 kg is tooo heavy for a professional baggage handler at Sydney main station. OK cool.) So, there we were, ready for our overnight bus trip to Melbourne. We didn’t manage to get a direct bus, so we had to change in the lovely town of Goulburn. Bus No.1 dropped us off at the train station and we headed to grab dinner at the nearby Soldiers Club. With some delightful Fish&Chips in our stomachs, we headed back to the station to grab Bus No.2 at 21:45. However, at 21:45, there was no bus. Anna checked our tickets only to find out that our bus was never meant to go from the station. It stops at a random gas station in the bush. That’s convenient, you know, for the bus driver to get gas and all, and for the passengers to get some snacks. OK cool. The three of us and a Japanese guy who, too, assumed public transport to work reasonably in this country found ourselves stranded in lovely Goulburn.
The lady at the train station, however, was extraordinarily kind and helpful, but even she could not get us tickets for the night train that was bound to Melbourne later that night, as it was fully booked. The best she could do was book us the last tickets for ten in the morning of the next day. 1st class, everything else was fully booked. We agreed (what else could we do?) and checked in to a hotel close by. Instead of saving one night of accommodation on the overnight bus, we not only wasted our bus tickets, bought first class train tickets, but we also invested in a featureless hotel room. At least, there was a bar that sold Bent Spoke beer and a genuinely friendly bar keeper. Cheers!
You think I am going to tell you about our amazing time in Melbourne now? Ha. No. We boarded our train only half an hour behind plan and started our journey through the outback. We sort of enjoyed the feel of taking a heritage railroad journey since in Europe, we usually connect major cities with efficient trains. After five hours of humpy-bumpy – we were delayed by almost two hours already – the train stopped at a dinky little station in the middle of nowhere. There was a problem with the engine, the engineer was trying to fix it. Poor guy. In the meantime, we were offered free “coffee” to mitigate the inconvenience. Ever seen ground coffee in a tea bag? Yup, that’s a thing here. They even have the audacity to print “Italian Espresso Style” on the bag. Anyway, the engineer didn’t manage to fix the train, so we had to wait for replacement buses and arrived in Melbourne at around midnight. At this point, we were happy we hadn’t booked our return ticket to Sydney yet. After this memorable 2-day journey, grudgingly, we decided to book a 90-minute flight for our way back. Melbourne was cool, by the way.
Australia has been great, and there is no sarcasm in my voice when I say this. In no other country did we meet so many kind, generous, fun, and lovely people. We were overwhelmed with the numerous activities we were invited to, places we were shown and new people we connected with. If there is one reason I would like to come back to Australia, it’s definitely the amazing people. Public transport is a different story.
