24 November 2005 - Travelling Home

Journal Index

On Tuesday, we did some ground work with the horses. I'm still getting used to ropes and the carrot stick. After lunch, it was wet so we didn't go back outside, but just hung around inside. Shem, Kezia and I played a bit of music together. Shem played the flute, Kezia played the viola and I played the piano. We listed to a few songs on the iPod they have. We then had tea, worship and went to bed.

Yesterday was great! We did some more ground work with the horses, which includes asking the horses to move in different directions, away, forward, back, around, side-ways, etc. Afterwards was the best part. We did some horse riding around the 100-acre property that the Nilon's have. We went around the front paddock, across a few creeks, through some rainforest and down to the back paddock. I was starting to get a little more used to cantering, but still not quite used to guiding the horse with direction.

But the best part was on the way back up the hill home! I got into the rhythm of cantering for a long stretch up the slope and just cantered along the green grass, feeling the power of the horse pulling and pushing up the hill. It was an awesome feeling! Rocky was the name of the horse I worked with during the time I was there. I won't forget that experience, it was great!

After that, we unsaddled the horses, had some lunch and headed off to Coffs Harbour to do a few things in town. It's a 40 minute drive. We got back home and the Gaunt's and Carly came to visit. It was good to see them again. We also saw Ben again later that night. He came over to visit on Tuesday afternoon and had a pet possum with him.

This morning Shem took me around to see the township of Ulong and Timmsvale, and we saw the old hydroelectric system near the creek. Also took a few other photos from around the place. Ulong is among a few small townships of 20 to 50 houses, surrounded by cleared green grassed paddocks and rainforest bush. It's located up in the mountains behind Coffs Harbour and Coramba. The roads are very windy, averaging about 60 km/h safe travelling in a car. The main road through the area is bitumen with many dirt roads going off the main connecting roads. Most of the time I was at Ulong, it was cloudy, misty, rainy weather, but it's not usually that cloudy. Yesterday we saw some blue sky and sunshine, which was really nice. The days had minimums of 10 to 15 degrees Celcius up to 20 to 25 degrees--quite comfortable.

After lunch, we headed down to Coffs Harbour and went to the "Big Banana". We had a look at a puzzle shop and lolly shop and then went to the train station. The train arrived about 20 minutes late. I said good bye to Shem and Kezia and Mrs Nilon and the train left about 4:15 pm.

We just left Grafton 15 minutes behind schedule and we're headed for Casino, where we should be at 6:50 pm, NSW time (1 hour ahead of Qld time, becuase NSW has daylight saving time and Qld doesn't). From there, there is a coach link to Brisbane, where Tim will pick me up at about 9:30 pm, Queensland time. Then I'll drive home from Brisbane in my car back to Cabarlah. I should get home before mid-night.

At the moment we're crawling throught the town of Grafton at about 30 km/h (seems like 10km/h). Most of the trip between Coffs and Grafton it seemed like we were travelling about 90km/h, and some section we speeded up to maybe 130 km/h. In a train at 100km/h is seems a lot slower than a car at 100.

The train travel is quite nice. You can tilt your seat back, use the foot rest, and fold down a little table in front of you to rest your laptop, book, writing pad, cups or other on. There's a noisy air conditioner at the front of the carriage, and the wheel joints creek and grumble a bit, but apart from that, the train ride is quite peaceful. There are about 8 carriages on the deisel-powered train. This carriage (economy class) carries about 50 people. There are toilets at the end of each carriage. There's first class carriages and a club car and one engine. The XPT train is a passenger train which travels between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Not looking forward to the coach ride so much. But I'm very happy with the price. Only $31.90 to get from Coffs Harbour to Brisbane! It would cost me more to drive! Thankfully I haven't been travel sick so far... I just keep looking out the window every now and again as I travel along. Anyhow, I'll sit back a bit and enjoy the ride.

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