Melbourne to North Queensland
A winter escape from Melbourne to Magnetic Island by train. We travelled without our bikes, at least in part because NSW trains make it extremely difficult to do so.
Each way, the trip took: a night between Melbourne and Sydney; a second night between Sydney and Brisbane; and 16 hours between Brisbane and Townsville (20 hours if you go all the way to Cairns).
Night travel allowed us to break the journey each way exploring the Sydney and Brisbane regions. Here are some things we learnt1.
The northward journey
Wednesday, 5 July 2023. Straight from Chris’s last day at work, we caught the suburban train into Southern Cross Station with our bags, leaving an hour to kill before the Sydney train left from Platform 1 at 8 pm (ish). It’s worth noting that evening dining options around Southern Cross Station are limited, particularly mid-week, but what’s on offer is almost certainly going to be better than the pre-prepared meals available on the train. After a recent nightmarish encounter with the baggage handling department at Southern Cross, we knew to take all of our bags with us into our sleeper cabin, where there was plenty of storage room.
The train was late in from Sydney (not an uncommon occurrence), so we had to wait a while for them to prepare the train for its return journey. (No hurry, though, we have all night.) Once we were allowed on, we settled into our comfortable (enough) cabin and enjoyed the ride out of town for an hour or two before asking the conductor to make up our beds for a not bad night’s sleep.
It is also worth noting that the XPT trains are over 40 years old (something the conductors apologized for a fair bit), so there are no reliable powerpoints in the cabins. There is one that may work, but even if it does, the conductors advise against charging anything valuable with it. Also, obviously, no wifi, and to make things worse, the windows in these old trains dampen phone signals. Just as well the trip is mainly about sleeping.
Thursday, 6 July 2023. The previous time Chris had made this trip, it was an uneventful glide into Sydney Central Station around 7 am, with Sydney looking resplendent. Unfortunately our trip coincided with extensive rail works, so we were herded off the train at Campbelltown at 6:30 onto buses for the hour-long drive into Sydney. We masked up, a bit fearful post-pandemic, but it was ok, despite a fair bit of coughing and spluttering around the bus. So, it was a slightly less romantic drive into Central Station at 8 am.
At this point, we made the rookie error of heading straight for the baggage storage room in the main concourse, where they were happy to take $30+ off us for taking care of our bags for the day. We subsequently learned that the NSW TrainLink luggage room on platform 1 would have taken care of our bags for free, given that we had ongoing tickets. Alas!
We headed for the metropolitan train lines, enjoying tapping on and off with credit cards. (If only Melbourne would also enter the 21st century…) We found ourselves at quiet Circular Quay at 8:30 am and went looking for some breakfast. After breakfast we jumped on a ferry to Watsons Bay, for a leisurely walk along the cliffs and a bit of whale spotting. The ferry trip to and from Watsons Bay is a cheap way to take in the classic sights of Sydney Harbour. The perfect respite between two nights on XPT trains. We even managed a harbour-side lunch before heading back to Central Station.
We made it back to Central Station with what we thought was plenty of time, but we were immediately herded onto another bus (same reason as this morning) that took us the 2 hour drive to Newcastle to join the train to Brisbane. Once on the train, we knew the drill. Unfortunately, the timing meant we had to savour the delights of the train food. Verdict: edible.
Friday, 7 July 2023. The XPT arrives into Roma Street Station at 5 AM. (We believe this is to avoid it competing for track space with the metropolitant trains. If that’s true, they really need to sort that out.)
You might think this a very inconvenient time to arrive in a city, but in these days of car share companies, there are plenty of options for walking a short distance and picking up a car for an early morning drive somewhere more desirable than Roma Street. Flexicar and Kinto have cars in South Brisbane, a ~15 minute walk from the station. GoGet has cars a similar distance away, in the city.
Rather than leaving one of us with our luggage at early-morning Roma St, we grabbed a taxi for the short ride to pick up our flexicar in South Brisbane, and headed straight out of town north.
Dropping by to pick up our friend at her place near Noosa, we were having a magnificent morning swim at Tea Tree Beach in the Noosa Heads National Park by 8 AM. After two nights on the train, we chose to spend the night at Noosa, so we had a lovely day exploring Noosa and catching up with our Noosa friends.
The Spirit of Queensland was a delight. Ushered to our very comfy seats (that would become very comfy beds later on), we were greeted with a drink by the friendly and helpful attendants. The train left Roma Street smoothly and on time, and we sat back and enjoyed the scenery gliding by in a much more relaxing way than our last two days’ experience of driving up and down the Bruce Highway to Noosa. The rail beds are essentially first-class airline seats: super comfortable pods with an entertainment system (an interesting selection of recent and not-so-recent movies and TV shows to watch). Dinner, served at our seats, was great. Once the attendants came around and converted our pods to beds, we both had a sound, comfortable night’s sleep.
Sunday, 9 July 2023. The 9:30 am arrival into Townsville gave us plenty of time to take in the passing cane fields and wetlands in the early morning. Our arrival at Townsville station was unusually noisy because it coincided with some big V8 racing weekend. We called for a taxi from the taxi phone at the station. The taxi driver that arrived was indifferent to whether he was the taxi we had booked or not, so we obeyed his gesticulations and piled in. (In retrospect this was a harbinger of the problematic Townsville taxi situation we later encountered).
We had failed to do any homework on the Magnetic Island Ferry timetables, and found ourselves at the Sealink terminal with an hour and a half to kill. We had to divine this ourselves, because the fellow in the SeaLink office who sold us tickets was unsympathetic to anyone who wasn’t aware of the system. The ferry ride, when it happened was fine, and we arrived at Nelly Bay on Magnetic Island at the right time to check in to the house we had rented in Horseshoe Bay. They gave us a lift over there after we had stocked up at the supermarket. And we were happy.
The middle bit
Our two weeks in our Horseshoe Bay house was great. We weren’t expecting it, but the house came with a couple of rickety bikes that we were able to hook our Ortleib panniers on (having travelled with them and their backpack attachments). The bikes were great for exploring Horeshoe Bay, but challenging to climb the not insignificant hill, on a fairly busy narrow road, over to Arcadia, and Nelly Bay and beyond. We managed the ride to Picnic Bay once, but reverted to using the quite good bus service for visits around the island after that (as the ride definitely exceeded our take-it-easy benchmark)
For our third week in North Queensland, we had hoped to do the Thorsborne trail on Hinchinbrook Island, but failed to get in: the online booking system gets snapped up in minutes when places open (6 months in advance) each night at midnight. If we had’ve got in, we probably would have cauhgt the train to Cardwell (there is a daily service between Townsville and Cairns). Instead we opted for a hire car for a week in Mission Beach. Since then, we discovered that Kinto have cars in Townsville that we would probably use now. Nevertheless, Kinto or a hire car company would not have spared us the final surprise that Townsville had waiting for us…
The southward journey
Wednesday, 2 August 2023. We returned our hire car to the Sixt office, 3.5 km from the train station, at 1:30, giving us an hour and a half to catch the 2:54 Spirit of Queensland heading south. We called a taxi, and waited, and waited… and started to get nervous around 2:15. At 2:30, we threw ourselves at the mercy of one of the Sixt workers who was knocking off. She was kind enough to give us a lift to the station, even though it was in the opposite direction to her drive home. What a life saver: we were safely on the train with time to spare. We only discovered later that Townsville suffers from a shortage of taxi drivers, and getting a taxi any afternoon is a big challenge. I’m not sure we would have had any luck booking in advance or using Uber, but perhaps we should have timed our return to coincide with one of the not very frequent and not very direct buses that serve Townsville.
After the stress of getting to the train had passed, sitting back in our railbed pods was like coming home. The lovely attendant remembered us, even remembering our back-stories. The return trip was as good as the journey north. We encountered a cycle tourist on the train who confirmed that he was able to just roll his bike on at Ayr for the trip to Brisbane. (How difficult could it be to have a similiar service south of the border?)
Thursday, 3 August 2023. We arrived back at Brisbane, Roma Street station platform 10 at 10:20 AM, with 4 hours to kill before the 2:30 bus south.
It’s a bus to get the sleeper service south at Casino Station at 7:30 pm because a Sydney train is not compatible with Brisbane’s afternoon metro services (once again, don’t they really need to sort that out?). This compounds the difficulty/impossibility of taking one’s bike on a NSW TrainLink train between Brisbane and southern cities.
To fill in the 4 hours, we took our bags up the elevator opposite Platform 10 to the Roma Street gardens, where there was a good cafe and lovely gardens to sit in to while away our wait. We did look at the possibility of left luggage, but there are only a couple of services quite a walk from the station in the city. Roma Street Station was being majorly redeveloped when we passed through, and one might hope that the new station will have a left luggage service.
While not being a train, the bus ride to Casino was scenic and the sunset was spectacular. The one-hour wait at Casino station for the train to arrive was bearable. The night on the XPT train to Sydney was more of the same.
Friday, 4 August. We had decided to take a 5-day break in Sydney on the way home, and booked a place to stay in Whale Beach on Sydney’s far northern beaches. We had booked a flexicar for the 5 days, and it was just a five minute walk to the car in Surrey Hills opposite Central station.
Unexpectedly our 5 days in Whale Beach was the highlight of the trip. Just as beautiful as Magnetic Island, but without the tourists: seemingly just young mums with toddlers and grumpy old men who resented their paradise being discovered by others.
Wednesday, 9 August 2023. On our final day in Sydney, we returned the car in the early afternoon, left our luggage in the very helpful NSW TrainLink luggage room on platform 1, caught a movie, and wandered the lanes of Chippendale, where we found a great selection of food. A great way to end our stay in Sydney.
We thought we knew the drill as we boarded our last XPT that evening at Central Station, and our cabin seemed familiar. But is was some time in the middle of the night when the top bunk became unbearably hot. The roof was hot: it was like I was being cooked. I jumped down and found ground level about 5 degrees cooler, and opening the door found that it was another 5 degrees cooler out in the passage. In my exhaustion I decided to lie on the floor with my legs sticking out into the passage, much to Maree’s distress when she woke up, fearing that I had collapsed. By the next morning the roof seemed to have cooled down again, and the conductor needed a bit of convincing that it was a real problem. He (once again) apologised for their ageing fleet, and said we should have let them know at the time and they could have found another cabin. Oh well, next time (maybe!).
Thursday, 10 August 2023. Home again early on a Thursday morning. It really was a joy to be arriving back in Melbourne in the middle of the city, just having to jump on a metropolitan train to get back home. (Who would fly?)
Footnotes
Avoid the baggage handling department at Southern Cross Station (there is plenty of room in sleeper cabins for a normal amount of luggage).
Currently there is no option for travelling with (non-folding) bikes on NSW TrainLink trains other than to box them up. Please email us if you know of an easy way to get bikes between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane without being lumbered with a car to worry about.
BYO food on the NSW trains, or eat before, if you can. (But you won’t starve if you can’t.)
The NSW TrainLink baggage room on Platform 1 will mind your bags for free if you have an onward ticket. The baggage storage room on the main concourse charges for the same service.
A car from a car share company is a great option for breaking the journey at Sydney or Brisbane, or for dealing with the early northbound arrival into Brisbane.
A great way to fill the day in Sydney between legs is to jump on a ferry for a trip across the harbour (You’ll see the most on the Manly or Watsons Bay Ferries).
The railbed service on the Spirit of Queensland is fantastic. You should book as far in advance as possible (note that it only runs 4 days per week). Ringing the booking line can give better options than on line.
If you are unfortunate enough to score an overheated cabin on the XPT, tell the conductor: they may be able to find you a better one. (Note that all XPT advice will be obsolete soon, when the new stock are delivered)↩︎