The trip up was reasonable. Bobbie dropped me at the station at about 6:15; the luggage people asked what I was giving them for transport, and I said it was a bike – they said OK. At Coffs, I was walking along the station towards the luggage cart and didn’t see the bike bag, so I called out that there should be a bike getting of the train, just before the train was about to pull away. The luggage person on the train said  that no-one had told her about a bike, and I said that it was in a canvasy bag with my name on it. They found it and gave it to me. Half an hour later I was all set up and on the way to the motel.

Double checking everything after checking in, I found that the  old Garmin Etrex GPS wasn’t working. I checked with freshly charged batteries, and it was still dead. As only that plus the camera use AA batteries, that’s now a ton of dead weight. The cadence sensor is also not registering for no known reason. I’ll just ride without it working and see if it comes good.

On the train, I spoke to one of the buffet staff about the report in the paper that talked about extra money going to CountryLink. He said that it will all go to the Hunter Valley and coal freight. I said that the paper had mentioned money for further north, which is quite likely for use on passenger services. His opinion is that the Murwillumbah line will never re-open. There was no freight on that line, so no freight subsidy and no incentive to maintain the 13 wooden bridges on that section.

Update from a few days later – apparently there was something on some current affairs show talking about how good for freight it would be to have a rail option. It’d certainly please the residents of Billinudgel to have less trucks on the freeway.