When you have travelled from Perth to Melbourne by air, you might as well keep going, to enjoy what we West Australians call "The Eastern States", before coming home again. This picture is of the new Silo art in the town of Rochester in Victoria. We travelled by both train and bus to Rochester on this trip. Rochy is where our family are living.
We sandwiched two important family stays in country Victoria with a lot of journeys on trains and buses through New South Wales and Victoria -almost 3,000 km of journeys which took us to Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Orange (because it is on the other side of the Blue Mountains!) Choosing train travel meant that we could relax and enjoy the day. I spent most of the time just staring out the window, unwilling to miss any scenery.For people at our stage of life, public transport is often much cheaper with our Seniors discounts than hiring a car would be.
This picture is from Flagstaff Hill in Melbourne. We had arranged our public transport concessions in both Melbourne and Sydney and found that it was very easy to get around in both places.
The other consideration is that the use of public transport cuts down carbon emissions per person who is on the bus or train! This is slow living at its best.
We hadn't visited the Old Cathedral church in Melbourne until this trip, but found both a lovely set of stained glass windows and some CDs of choir music which we have greatly enjoyed on our return home.
Melbourne was our home for 13 years, and we still have friends and family who live there. It was great to be able to catch up with them. This picture is taken from Southbank.
From Melbourne we caught the XPT to Sydney and then the next morning went off through the Blue Mountains to Orange. Each train trip was comfortable and convenient. The staff were cheerful and helpful.
In Orange we stayed at Duntryleague Guest House, which is situated in a lovely golf range. We took our first ever wine tour of vineyards in the Orange region, and had a lovely time. There was snow in Orange just before we arrived, and it snowed a few days after we left, but the days were were in town were sunny. My puffer jacket, thermals, hat and gloves got a real workout, however.
One of my favourite historical homes is Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta.
Despite all our travels around, it was really all about visiting our family and supporting them with some grand-parenting, which were the real reasons for our trip. It is hard to bring up three children when you are far from family support. Our son and daughter in law do an amazing job, but when they have to go away together for work, we needed to come over and help.It was a lovely time, even though exhausting and busy!
We are now home and recovering! DH came back with bronchitis but is getting better. I had a cold or some kind of sinusy-allergy thing which laid me low for a while but I am feeling better today. It may be something to do with being further away from the canola fields in flower!
