"A Single to Sydney, Please"

To Sydney ... and home again for Xmas

After an enjoyable few days relaxing in Melbourne, I took the train to Albury on the Victoria/NSW border, where I met Dave, one of the original cOzBus members. We drove to Canberra and did some sight-seeing in that rather strange city, before meeting Nat at Canberra airport on Friday night. Canberra is more like a university campus and a shopping mall stuck together, than a real city. It was originally designed by Walter Burley Griffin, a major 20th century American architect and it has a very American feel to it. It is composed of several suburbs that are interconnected by dual carriageways, so it's hard to get around without a car. The suburbs are small and self-contained, each with its own 'town centre' with shopping and commercial districts. It's not the sort of place I could see myself living but it was interesting to wander around a bit and observe its strangeness.

Dave, Nat and I spent a great night in a campsite on the edge of Canberra. We were no more than ten minutes' drive from the city centre, but we were already deep in the bush. It was a perfect night for camping - for once cold enough to use a sleeping bag - and we spent hours lying gazing at the stars and watching for 'sputniks'.

On Saturday we drove to Jindabyne to rendezvous with OzBus and to spend the last night with the gang. It wasn't very far to Jindabyne and OzBus wasn't due in until the evening, so in the afternoon we went to Mount Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains, which at a lofty 2,228 metres is Australia's highest peak. We had planned to make an assault on one of the 'Seven Summits', but the chair-lift stopped running at 4pm. We realised that we didn't have enough time to summit and make it back to the chair-lift before it ceased operation for the day, so we went only as far as the Kosciuszko lookout. We did however get to take some photographs of us playing in the snow in Australia in December. This really is unimpressive as continental peaks go: it's not particularly high and there's a chair-lift to within a couple of hundred metres of the summit, although I suppose real 'Seven Summiters' probably walk up instead of taking the chair-lift.

On Saturday evening we had our last OzBus dinner in Jindabyne followed by the OzBus awards ceremony, brilliantly compèred by Andy and Gordon. We had nominations in dozens of categories and none of the passengers or crew left without an award. In the steady rain, I retired around midnight to my tent, for my last night under canvas of 2007. As it was the last night, almost everyone upgraded, but, contrary to the end, I decided to sleep with the rain lashing against the flysheet.

On Sunday morning we bid farewell to Nat and Dave and had our last OzBus breakfast before wandering bleary-eyed on to the bus for the day's drive to Sydney. We stopped off in Canberra where we visited Parliament House. Most of us were only interested in the building's pies, coffee and toilets. Our general lack of enthusiasm and burnt-out state meant that plans to visit other sights in Canberra were abandoned. We climbed back on board and drove to Goulburn, where we had lunch and also said goodbye to Maz, who jumped off early to be picked up by her brother and his family.

The last couple of hours' drive to Sydney were quite sombre. We listened to Christmas songs and tried to come to terms with the fact that after twelve indescribably long weeks together we had finally reached the end of the road. OzBus 2 was no more. We got caught in some traffic on the edge of Sydney so it took us quite a while to reach the viewpoint - Macquerie's Point - where we posed for some group photos with the opera house and harbour bridge backdrop. It was hard to believe that we had arrived in Sydney in the middle of summer. It was like an Irish summer's day: grey with a steady drizzle.

After the group photos we all got back on board and were taken into Circular Quay, where we got off for some tearful goodbyes, although most of us would see each other again in the next few days. Andrew Kelleher from OzBus was there, wearing something of a hangdog expression. Certainly the bright and cheery Andrew who had seen us off in London twelve weeks earlier was missing. A couple of the passengers tried to express some of their displeasure and disappointment, but these attempts were rebuffed with a 'send me an email'. There was to be no post-mortem on the wet streets of Sydney this Sunday evening.

After dozens of goodbye hugs, I picked up my rucksack and my daypack and hopped into a taxi to my hotel. OzBus was over. Freedom.

29 12 2007 - 22:13 - macmac - OzBus| 482 comments - § ¶