A little train journey

Since my youngest daughter, her husband and my grand daughter  relocated to the south coast i have on occasion travelled down to visit or babysit so that they could  attend  certain functions.
Sometimes we travel down by car, but mostly I go down by train. It takes me about four hours with a train change in Sydney.As my husband is a long term rail employee, we are fortunate to be able to travel the public transport system for free.So I find train travel a real stress free luxury that  I indulge in as often as I can.
Last week my daughter asked if i could travel down  this last weekend just gone to babysit while she went to a Bon Jovi  concert in Sydney. I decided to travel by train and take a few photos along the way to share with you all.
I am happy to go down as  my husband was away working and we arn't heading up to the farm until the end of this week.

So,I boarded the  electric express service to Sydney from our local station which is about 10 minutes drive from here.It is a very pleasant trip down the coast, passing, crowded  townships, and lazy coastal villages and lovely waterways and hilly terrain, all very picturesque.

A fair part of the way the rail line follows the old highway and the new expressway down the coast. It travels past many lakes and major rivers and even the ocean at times. the little old house in the photo above is one of my particular favourite  places that I look out for on each trip. It is some bodies weekender that is only accessible by boat, what a lovely little spot to have a holiday, but still not all that far from major services.
Excuse the quality of the photographs, as they were taken through dirty train windows that were moving along quite fast.

This lovely little spot is called Hawkesbury River Marina, a quaint little out of the way place on the hawkesbury River where you can stay in accommodation  or  go out on boat trips. One such trip which we have done is called "The Riverboat Postman", you travel the mail run on the boat around all the islands in the area  and have a lovely buffet lunch while on board( a really relaxing enjoyable day)
As you approach Sydney Central Station,you pass by the beautiful old "Mortuary Station".
This beautiful old building was  opened in  1869 and was built to facilitate the transportation of the deceased to local cemeteries for internment.It has recently been restored to it's former glory.

At Central station I changed trains to then travel on the south coast line towards Wollongong.

Central is a lovely old railways station, which officially opened around 1906, replacing an earlier Central station.Central has about 26 platforms, some above ground and some below ground,it is Sydney's main rail terminal.

As we headed down south the surrounding country is beautiful, passing over large viaducts and  alongside beautiful coastal towns.

After arriving at my destination, I had a lovely lunch with my daughter and grand daughter,put my daughter on the train and then spent the afternoon and night with my beautiful little girl.

We had a ball, we read books, and played fairies, and watched Scooby Doo(The current Favourite) and cooked her favourite dinner of sausages, corn, mashed potato and peas.
She slept like a log, and I couldn't resist an early morning photo of my sleeping beauty.
We met my daughter off the train about lunchtime, and spent a bit of time together and I  started back on the return journey about 3pm.

The above are a few more shots of the beautiful scenery that I get to see from the train on the return journey, the centre one is especially beautiful(you come out of a long dark tunnel, and just as you exit, that is the view immediately to your left.) Breath taking,j ust so much  glorious scenery every where.
I arrived back at my local railway  station around 8pm that night,tired and weary, but full of joy  from my great  little expedition.
Hope you have enjoyed my little trip with me, it has been a pleasure to have you along.
Take care every one out there,
until we catch up again,
Cheers,
Jane.

 

Builders,we are not.!

My husband and I are not builders, we may have other talents, I love to can and take photographs..(.not necessarily talented at either of those activities) and my husband is a mechanical whizz, can just about fix anything. But builders,we are not.
We have brilliant ideas and plans in our heads of what we want, but it's just bringing those plans to fruition that is the problem.
There is so much up the farm that needs attention, and  as there is not  a lot of spare money around we decided  to bite the bullet and have a go at a few simple less important jobs ourselves.

We have a shed up the back of our house, long and rectangular,which houses the solar panels on the roof which powers our home, the power room is located in one end of this shed, the other end we wish to covert to my new laundry room(my old internal laundry room will become my new canning pantry( yay !!!).At the far left hand end of this shed is another  small external storage room and    an  internal extra toilet and basin. What we decided we would like to do was turn that little extra shed at the left hand side of the photo into an extra  outdoor shower room connected internally to that toilet and basin.This will be the very first stage, and I will follow up later on as the project progresses.

We have some wonderful friends who regularly come up to the farm and give their time  and effort to help us out and with hopefully four heads together, problem solving may be a liitle easier, and anyway the old saying "Many hands....."
The first job was to remove the exterior siding from the outside around the original door, then remove the back wall of the shed to create the new internal opening to the bathroom.

Next the siding that was the original internal wall was replaced as the new external wall if you get what I mean.

So far so good, the siding is old and caused numerous problems as it had to fit neatly into special shaped corner strips and many times it required all our hands to hold and balance while things were secured.
We are happy with the job so far, this was to just create the new external shell ready for the plumbing and lining stage which should follow before too long.The photo below, shows the wall finished and the view inside of the new shower room to be.

We have already purchased a tankless gas hot water service to  supply hot water to the shower and the new laundry, also have purchased a white 1.2mtx1.mt fiberglass shower  base to go on the floor and most of the plumbing supplies required. All we need is the time and manpower to complete the job.
This is never intended to be a five star bathroom facility, it is just an outdoor back up and as we have a lot of caravaning and camping guests, we thought it would be even better if they had their own basic bathroom facilities to use, and that it would then take a bit of pressure off the facilities in the house.
I will  update the progress with another  entry as we finally get onto the job and hopefully complete it.
So until we meet again,
take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane .