Armidale to Sydney
Armidale Railway Station
The morning of the 23rd of May, 2023, in Armidale, New South Wales, was winter cold with a fine layer of frost over lawns and gardens and few people venturing out of their cosy houses.
I was early for the bus to Sydney and had time to admire and photograph the elegant, recently restored railway station, and gaze over the neat little houses and tidy, misty streets.
I had hoped to take the train but the line was closed for track work and the Railways had provided a bus instead, which I took to Sydney that May morning with two tickets as I had two large suitcases with me and the published regulations of the Railways stated that only one suitcase was permissible per passenger and there was no one I could ring to talk about it as the booking was done online, mechanically, without even a bot with whom to chat. I felt it wise, therefore, to have two seats booked and paid, one for each suitcase.
Having acquired recently, accidentally, something approaching financial security, I had enough funds for a comfortable lifestyle somewhere, but not in my home country. Accommodation was expensive and scarce in Australia and I had nowhere near enough to buy a house there. I could, however, afford to rent suitable accommodation in Nepal, for example, where expenses were much lower. Recklessly, I had suddenly committed to the upheaval and made all the necessary arrangements to depart and had no choice anymore. I was on my way, crossing the great water at last.
Once in Sydney I would get a taxi from Central Station to the airport to stay overnight in a hotel and board the early flight to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. I would arrive in Vietnam at the beginning of the monsoon, a challenging time to be sure, but waiting in Australia for three more months would have taken me through another winter in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, something I was keen to avoid. It was just as well to get going and plunge headlong into Asia, an exciting, unpredictable, fount of possibilities.
It turned out there was plenty of room on the bus as it was only half full and the uniformed lady who greeted me at the station wrinkled her nose and said I ‘probably would have been all right’ with the extra suitcase but it had only cost fifty dollars to be doubly sure. I was at the beginning of a long and tricky journey juggling two suitcases and two guitars half-way across the world; I was prepared for inconvenience and some expense.
The bus trip would have been pleasant if not for one harassed father who loudly berated his protesting three year old son for almost the whole journey. The conversation occupied the attention of all the passengers as the father’s soliloquy embraced the whole of the child’s life, his mother’s flawed character, and the incongruities of public transport as the child was always perfectly well-behaved on the train. Everyone was uncomfortable but no one said anything.
They got off at the second-last stop, somewhere in Sydney’s inner west, to everyone’s relief, as we came closer to Central Railway Station.
Sydney Central Railway Station (image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
In a moment of questionable inspiration I had posted my guitars to myself at Poste Restante, Ho Chi Minh City Post Office, Vietnam. It was a strange feeling parting with them, and it wasn’t something I had done before. The classical guitar in particular had not been separated from me in 36 years, but it made sense and as I would have to trust a lot of people and institutions and businesses in the near future, I had to make a start. I managed to struggle along with the suitcases and get them into a cab which would take to me to my budget hotel (if a hundred and fifty dollars a night is actually ‘budget’) at the airport from which I would arise fresh in the morning with plenty of time to get through the various queues and onto the flight to Ho Chi Minh City.
The airline, a major Vietnamese carrier, had a special offer going with double the normal baggage allowance, as part of an effort to revive tourism in Vietnam after the lost years of the covid lockdowns. This was fortuitous. With the guitars in the post I wouldn’t have to worry about them until I was in Asia where I felt such an inconvenience could be managed with some payment and the kindness of strangers. It was a direct flight which would deliver me in the late afternoon.
All the staff at the airport hotel and the taxi drivers were Asian. I was swimming against the tide, an Australian going to Asia in search of adventure, while Asians were coming to Australia in their millions, either to settle or work a while and then take their savings home. No one could complain, I thought, of an Australian wanting to migrate to Nepal. It seemed only fair.
I slept well and woke early. I was able to get some breakfast from a fast food place nearby. There weren’t too many places where I could smoke but it was possible, with a little ingenuity. I gazed at the traffic for a while, knowing I wouldn’t be seeing it again for a very long time, if ever. In fact I couldn’t afford to go to Sydney, the city in which I was born and raised, any more. I hadn’t been there in thirty years. It was a wistful farewell, with a dreamlike finality to it.
Travels to Nepal 