Onwards and upwards...

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Got to love the greyhound…..or not.
It’s an 18hour bus ride from Brisbane to Sydney. That’s a very long bus ride in European standards but for Australia it’s nothing to write home about. (ha!). Now, on the whole you’ve got the choice between two different Bus Companies. There are others around, often for the more popular short haul journeys, but amongst the Backpacking community Greyhound and Premier are the only ones talked about.
Greyhound runs more routes than Premier and often with more busses running per day. You’ll often pay more, but not always. Premier has a one bag per person policy whilst Greyhound will allow two bags, neither allow luggage heavier than 20kg, I’m not exactly sure as to why this is the case. But I’m guessing it’s a health and safety thing and not a fuel saving measure!
Like always, they ‘say’ maximum of 20kg, but in reality you can get away with a few kg’s over. I personally travel with 22kg of kit in a large backpack and probably a further 7 or 8kgs in hand luggage. Laptop, camera, tripod, guitar etc. I’m waiting until this tactic comes back to bite me, and I’m sure it will, but live and learn!
For the Journey from Brisbane to Sydney a friend and I managed to get a ‘last minute’ type deal on a Greyhound bus that would work out about $15 cheaper than Premier. This left at 7pm on the Sunday and would arrive at around 12:30pm the following Monday. The journey would cost $88 and being an overnight bus, save on a nights’ accommodation. A pretty good deal…..on paper.
Arriving at the ‘Transit Centre’ in Brisbane around 6:30pm, a building that has both local and national trains and busses leaving from within its walls. This was for ‘check-in’, I’ve travelled a few times now on the bus and still can’t work out if this procedure actually has any more to it than simply putting a cardboard tag on your bag with your name and destination; which in my experience is never checked anyway! Never the less we were ‘checked in’ and boarded by departure time at 7pm.
A major difference between the Greyhound and that of let’s say ‘National Express’ back home is the driver. The drivers here would actually seem to enjoy their job for one; often a trip begins with the normal two minute company spiel, you know the one. “The toilet is situated to the rear of the vehicle; it’s the law to wear a seat belt”. You sit there wondering who on earth writes this stuff and whether they actually had a single iota of common sense themselves. But every time I have travelled on the bus the driver has continued with his own personal take on the journey, when the next ‘comfort stop’ is and if the coffee is good or not. A little thing yes, but nevertheless it’s nice to know that the person up front is actually alive and not just a uniformed ticket machine wanting to get the journey over and done with.
Personally I haven’t quite worked it out yet; but often there is a movie played at some point of the journey, whether this is a scheduled event or more of a ‘whenever the driver feels like it’ affair, I can’t be sure. It’s not exactly ‘in-flight’ entertainment, but it may well pass an hour or two and that’s something at least! Apart from that, as always with these things there is the IPod, book or failing that the view.
The problem with my Brisbane to Sydney trip was, well, the ‘toilet situated to the rear of the vehicle’. In short, it was broken. How broken is hard to describe, but if I said that after only two hours of the journey over there was a distinct stench coming from its direction. Coupled with a slow but steady trickle of what I hope was just water running down the middle of the coach towards the front door. Two hours down and sixteen to go, somehow I just knew I should of taken a flight. The fact is I was genuinely surprised how quickly everyone became accustomed to the issue, it was really only at the ‘comfort stops’ when you left for thirty or so minutes before boarding again that it was a problem. All part of the fun at the end of the day! (Ok, maybe not ‘fun’, but you know what I mean.)
Anyhow, after nineteen or so hours we arrived in Sydney. Now this was my first time in the Australian capital so to see the Opera house and to drive over the famous harbor bridge was a nice end to the journey.
.........continued in next entry

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