Clickety Click 3

The next part of our journey has us boarding the Queensland Rail, The Sunlander to Brisbane. The train left Cairns at 9:15 am and arrives at 3:55 pm the next day. We decided to travel all inclusive, with a sleeper unit and meals included. We have Alistair and Gail looking after our desires. We have a dining car, club car at our disposal for the ten of us riding in the first class section. Once the train left we were asked to come to the Club Car for a welcoming drink. We were then escorted into the dining car for morning tea which was scrumptious. As we approach small communities and stations Alistair gives us a bit of information.Yes, we feel very pampered........

 Traveling along mostly inland we learned that we would only see the water's edge twice. The route, of course, takes a flatter landscape. Lots of sugar cane fields, banana plants, scrub forest and ranch land was the typical scenery with the odd river thrown in now and again. The meals were all delicious and presented with a bit of flare. Just after lunch dessert on the first day, we pulled into the town of Ingham for an unplanned extended stop. There has been intermittent power outages since we left Cairns. Electrical is supplied by a rear generator car for the running of the passenger cars. After 40 minutes we were informed that the generator was unfixable and everyone was to re-board for a 75 minute ride into Townsville where hopefully a new generator car would be waiting for us. Of course, no power, there goes the air conditioning. We were well looked after with free water, pop, ice cream and damp clothes for our necks. We assembled in the club car to start, but a few returned to their own cubicles as it was cooler. Once into Townsville, a new car was exchanged. After all this we were almost 2 hours behind schedule, but a lot of that time was made up during the night. Don't eat pork belly if you expect to sleep soundly in a railway berth bunk:-)

 The next day was much the same, great meals and service. However, we were surprised and glad to have reached our destination on time into Brisbane's Roma Street station. It was a different experience that gave us a bit of a taste of how our ancestors traveled across Canada. It is something we wouldn't want to do for more than two days in a row.