4/29/10 (ballarat)
Annie LinBallarat – Melbourne – Brisbane – Toowoomba
We got up early in the morning to check out Ballart before we had to head back to Melbourne to catch our flight to Brisbane. We grabbed breakfast in a café in the center of town. When we walked in the waitress asked if we wanted some brekky and Jon almost said “no, we want some breakfast” but changed his mind. We have noticed that Aussies like to shorten their words so they call breakfast brekky.
After breakfast we drove a short distance along the Avenue of Honour, which is lined with over 4000 elm trees and each one has a placard for each soldier who fought in World War I. We stopped in a second hand bookshop so I could trade in my book for a new one. I picked up an Australian book that someone in the shop said was a good read. Then Jon read about Sovereign Hill, which is an attraction that has recreated the 1850’s goldmine era of Ballart. They have rebuilt many of the same buildings that existed back then with people in costume occupying the shops. Just as we arrived a swarm of tour buses and school groups arrived. We would have liked to gone in but we were short on time.
We made our way to Melbourne airport and got there in plenty of time. Our flight was relatively short, only 2 hours, and not very crowded. Jon and I watched two episodes of Fringe. We had a very short window to catch our train and then Greyhound once we landed so everything had to be on time. We had been very lucky so far with all our travels and hadn’t run into any glitches until now. There was a holdup with the luggage, which meant we would miss our train and if we missed our train we would also miss the Greyhound bus that would take us to Toowoomba, where my friend Jean lived. Our reservation was for the last bus to Toowoomba, which is about 1-2 hours from Brisbane depending on traffic. If we didn’t catch the bus then we would need to stay a night in a hotel in Brisbane. I started to panic and lose my cool with the airline personnel. We waited 45 minutes for our bags! Once we got them we ran to the train but it had already left and the next one was going to be too late to catch the bus. We then rushed to grab a taxi and explained to the driver we had to get to the Roma Street station at 6:30pm and it was already 6pm. Luckily the driver was very considerate and drove as fast as he could during rush hour traffic. We arrive at the station at 6:30pm and luckily we had enough cash to pay him. We ran up two flights of stairs to the Greyhound counter and asked if we were too late. Again we were in luck, they were just about to leave and wondering where we were. Breathless we hopped on the bus and were on our way to Toowoomba. It was a close call. The ride went fairly quickly since there was a movie playing, Confessions of a Shopaholic.
Jean and her husband, Jono, picked us up at the bus station and we headed back to their house. It was great to see Jean who I hadn’t seen for five years and meet Jono. They have a beautiful house and a cute little dog named Ally.
There was a bit of stress and excitement in our day but it all ended on a good note.
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