Well I finally made a snap decision to take that holiday that I was
talking about months ago. Bairnsdale went out again because the
area was on fire earlier this week (causing the train line to
close), and now it's busy getting flooded by extreme rainfall. The
week after there's yet another planned closure of the line all
through melbourne for the whole weekend. But because all the
predicted rain ended up hitting that end of the state, my earlier
backup plan of visiting Kerang became a dry option again, and not
too hot either. So I twiddled some plans and finally booked things
in.
And now I wish I hadn't. For one thing, in the past the country
services had unreserved carriages which I used so that I could
change my mind about which service to take. No longer, it seems
that level of accomodating behaviour was a victim of the pandemic.
Except for the stretch between Melbourne and Bendigo, everything
needs to be booked in advance, which means that I've got to fuss
about making an alternate booking if I miss the train, which is
especially hard because most of the rural stations aren't attended
so you can't buy tickets at them.
So that adds frankly a lot more stress than I anticipated. Then
there's the motel/hotel bookings. I rang up to book the room at the
motel after double checking that the room with a bath (my little
booking obsession) was still available. Nope, someone rang up just
a few minutes earlier and booked it! There was a caravan park with
a cabin that had a bath for a similar price, but walking 2.5Km out
of town along the unpaved side of a highway at 10PM at night is a
bit much even for someone as crazy as me. So I gave in and took one
of their regular rooms with a shower.
I'd already decided to only stay one night there anyway and instead
stay a couple of nights at Pyramid Hill, where I do believe I might
be able to visit a hill that looks like a pyramid, albeit probably
not much else of note. Anyway it's half the cost staying in the pub
there so I figured I might as well get an extra night for my money
and a bit of a break between the long train journeys. I've always
been a bit curious about staying at an old fashioned hotel in one
of these small country towns too.
But of course those bookings are more things to worry about, and I
had the chicken-and-egg problem of which to book first - trains or
accomodation. Picking the latter, the 15min of head-scratching at
the railway station ticket office in town (apparantly not open
tomorrow, in spite of what the website V/Line says, so I'm glad I
went in a day early) while all my reservations were figured out was
a nervous wait to say the least.
Still after looking at some of the things I want to see (almost
forgot about those for a while!) I still feel like it _might_ be
worthwhile. I did also realise late that because I have to check
out of the first room at 10AM, that means I've got to carry my bag
around all day until I get to Pyramid Hill in the evening, so I'll
see how that goes. A corresponding lightening effort meant the
ditching of my digital camera, so I wont be sharing any holiday
shots with you until I get my darkroom set up one day.
I might be talking at you still though because in one of my
projects that I didn't bother writing up, I got that eeePC 701 set
up with current (but very lightweight) Linux, a fresh BIOS battery
(_under_ the motherboard, grumble grumble), and even a set of four
fresh(er) working cells in the main battery. Hopefully I've got
enough energy to set it downloading the entirity of the internet
(or at least the best bits) overnight using the free WiFi at that
motel tonight too.
But just to shake any growing sense of confidence, there's been a
track dislodgement on the first line I'm due to travel on, and
various services have been canceled or transmuted into buses. Not
my service, yet, but the updates keep changing, even apparantly in
contradiction of the indicated update time. I really think I had
the right idea before with day trips by car. To be fair, I think
some of the trains are even older than my car is!
Now the motel's supposed to call me by about now with the number of
the room I'm going to be in because I'm arriving so late they won't
be about to let me in themselves. Let's see if it happens... Not
yet.
