As you probably know from my last blog, I’ve been away for the past few days. I caught the train up to Urunga (just south of Coffs Harbour) to see my Mum, who I hadn’t seen in a few months. Well, it was quite a trip, so I guess I might as well detail it here!

Day 1:

I had to get up super early, because my train left Central at 7:15am (gah!). It was actually nice though – I don’t think I’ve really been up that early in Sydney before, except when I’ve got off the train from Melbourne, so it was a nice surprise, as the morning was wonderful.

On the train, I sat by myself for most of the time (not out of choice, but because seats are allocated, and nobody was allocated to sit next to me for the majority of the trip). However, some interest was created when I noticed that the girl sitting in front of me was reading a book about the history of Russia (something which I would really like to know more about). I actually got pretty excited, because since when is a girl about my age interested in Russian history? Well, I soon found out… She got out a notebook and started taking notes, and I soon realised that it was a book for school/uni/whatever. Oh well.

All was not lost though, as another girl sat next to me towards the end of my journey (not sure exactly where she got on, but she was coming from Port Macquarie, so I assume it was around there somewhere). We didn’t talk for quite some time, but after she finished reading her newspaper, she offered it to me. I declined, saying that I had to get off pretty soon (which was true), but asked if there was anything interesting going on. She mentioned that she was reading about the new Harry Potter book, and so ensued a wonderful conversation that lasted until I (sadly) had to leave the train. I don’t know what it was about it, but I felt completely relaxed and confident talking to her, and she seemed the same way. She’s also a first-year university student, studying Arts/Law at the University of Woollongong, and was heading up to Byron Bay with some friends (who weren’t on the train, I gather) for a break. The only horrible thing about the conversation was that I didn’t get her name, let alone phone number or anything… So yeah, for the following few days I was madly in love with a girl whose name I didn’t even know. Such is life!

Anyway, I got off the train and gave mum a nice big hug! We spent a fair bit of time just catching up, chatting and stuff. We took a walk out on the boardwalk at Urunga and saw a couple of whales playing out to sea a bit (jumping and splashing and stuff), which was pretty awesome! Then it was made even better when we saw a few dolphins playing in the waves not far out! Super!!

Day 2:

Well, we got up nice and early, as it’s pretty hard to sleep in when you’re camping (oh yeah, we were camping by the way!). Mum took me out for breakfast at a lovely little cafe run by a couple of really nice guys (gay, they were (Steve!)).

We decided to go for a drive up to Dorrigo National Park, where there’s an awesome rainforest. The road the was awesome – up into the hills, nice and steep and curvy . Oh yeah, I got to drive for the first time in a couple of months! I don’t seem to have lost my special touch, though. Hehe.

I’ve been to Dorrigo N.P. before, but didn’t walk as far into the rainforest last time (dysfunctional family…). Despite the cold (it was lovely and warm outside, but in the rainforest I had to put my jumper on and was STILL freezing!), the rainforest walk was awesome. So pretty! Mum and I took heaps of photos, some of which will probably make some appearances on grep * life > blog in the near future. Actually, I should post a couple here, too.

Driving back down the mountain, I had somebody tailgating me, which was really annoying. And I most certainly wasn’t going slow – I asked Mum if I was, and she said that she wouldn’t have wanted to drive any faster, so I guess it was just idiots.

I think it was this night that we went ventured out to the beach and took lots of photos of the moon (or possibly the first night, I can’t remember…).

Day 3:

Day 3 (being Monday) I discovered how confusing Coffs Harbour is to find your way around. I expected (pretty reasonably, I think) that the city centre would be pretty close to the beach, like most other coastal towns and cities. However, Coffs Harbour decided to do things a bit differently, and make their CBD not near the beach at all.

I also expected (also pretty reasonably, I thought) that the train station would be close to the CBD. This expectation was also shattered, just like the last one. The train station was next to the beach. Not only that, but it was in a really obscure place too, and I drove past it the first time. Oh yeah, I had to go to the train station to get my train ticket back to Sydney.

I am pretty sure that the ticketing system for CountryLink is the least automated and intuitive booking system I’ve ever seen, or at least close to it. When it comes to paying, at least. They had to enter my card number into the computer when entering my order details, but I don’t think that it actually served any purpose, as the man then had to manually enter in the amount to be paid into the little machine thingy where you swipe your card, and then I had to swipe my card and enter my PIN, etc. as usual. Weird. They screwed up the payment of the lady before me, too – the amount was out by 20 cents or so, so they had to redo it.

Oh, also while in Coffs, we stopped by the Big Banana to take a couple of photos, just because my boss said it was really bad (which is it, by the way).

When we got back to Urunga, I took some photos and video of the crested pigeons at the caravan park, which are some of the coolest and cutest birds ever. They bring back some good memories, too (of back in ye olde days, when we travelled around the western half of the country). YouTube video available here.

That night, Mum and I went on one of our random drives to Coffs Harbour and had a look around, had tea and stuff. This kind of thing used to be pretty frequent last year when we lived back in Ballarat.

Day 4:

I was feeling not-so-great, something I’m pretty sure was to do with the girl I met on the train (ergh, how did I not even manage to get her name…), so I went for a drive – music blaring, etc . I thought about driving down to Nambucca Heads or something, but the only place that ended up feeling right was north. So I ended up in Coffs Harbour, but didn’t stop there. After almost an hour of driving, I ended up in some place called Woolgoolga, north of Coffs, and thought I’d better ring Mum (she asked me to ring if I was going to be longer than an hour, which I definitely was). She told me I’d better head back, so I did, although I really didn’t feel very good about it. I would’ve been happier just continuing north… Who knows to where, although I probably would’ve stopped for a bit in Byron Bay…

Day 5:

Not a terribly interesting morning – got up, bought the newspaper in preparation for the train journey back (only had The Daily Telegraph… ugh), and jumped on the train! Pretty uneventful trip back – nobody sat next to me at all, so I just listened to music and read my book (I Wouldn’t Start From Here by Andrew Mueller – fantastic, if anybody was wondering).

I had to pick my sister Jemma up from the airport later that night. I caught the train out (>$10 for a return ticket, when the domestic airport is only 3 stops/9 minutes away from Central!). It was good to see her again, and we’ve been catching up on old times and all that. The only negative being a new thing, when I discovered that she’d taken up smoking. Ugh. Big ugh.

I wasn’t real keen on going to meet one of her friends that she’d met during her travels, but I went along anyway, and was glad I was in the end. Stefan is from Germany and he’s really awesome. Not the sort of guy I would expect Jemma to hang out, but that turned out to be a good thing! We wanted to get something to eat, but took too long to decided and all the shops closed, so we had to go to McDonalds…

Epilogue:

Well, I think that’s about it. I’m content just sitting around today, while Jemma goes out with Stefan again. Long blog, eh? Cool! Okay, bye!