Preparing for lift off

Setting off for 11 days exploring New Zealand's South Island during the Easter school holidays. Nicholas and Peter are standing in front of the pre-electronic era train schedule board at the Broadmeadow station, a short walk from our house in Hamilton, a suburb of Newcastle. The train stops on the board are rotated and changed by a foot pedal (not shown) at the bottom of each column. We're headed to Sydney Airport, about a three hour ride all told, to sleep over night in the Fomule One hotel, located next to the airport and across the highway from the "SUPREME" Rat & Mouse TRAP factory. A round-trip on the train from Newcastle to Sydney Central station is cheap, about $37 for an adult. However, the trip from Central Station to the airport, about five stops, is $10 each way on a recently built, privately operated train. We're told that Sydneysiders boycotted the airport train for a long time to protest the high fare. Convenience won out though once everyone realized how much time the train saved.

Our trip got off on the wrong foot when we left a backpack on a bench at the station. The next stop, Cardiff, came faster than I thought it would, and after fumbling with the tickets to give them to Sarah, the train door locked just before I could get off. About 10 minutes later I got off in Fasifern, in the middle of nowhere near Lake Macquarie. Everything worked out though--got the backpack from the station guys at Broadmeadow, met a very nice tennis-playing, New Zealand-native doctor from Newcastle (who has only been to the South Island once in his life) on the ride to Sydney, and got to our shoebox at Formule One about an hour after the rest of the family.