We had a bit of shunting and moving during the night so that one of the carriages could have some issues attended to. We found out that the passengers in carriage E had to stay the night in a nearby hotel for this to happen. Shower and breakfast and then out of Orange heading towards Bathurst. The countryside is so green and lush it is amazing.
Once we arrived in Bathurst we were allocated buses to take us to
Mayfield Gardens which I had not been to before. Lyn, Jenny and I wandered around together in our own time rather than following the others and we found some incredible plants and scenes.
Tulip Tree (Lyriodendron)
One I'd never seen before - Cornus kousa
Lunch was a picnic box at Mayfield Gardens before our group photo and back into the buses before heading back to Bathurst.
While the others headed to various museums I went to meet David (previous conductor of the St Stephens choir now living in Bathurst and Director of Music at the Cathedral). We sat in the park for a while chatting but because I had such a short visit we wandered slowly down towards the train and grabbed a coffee on the way.
David was very keen to see the train as he had travelled it as the Southern Aurora from Melbourne to Sydney years before. He was there to wave us goodbye when we headed out on our way to Kandos for the night.
During this leg of the journey we had some lovely glimpses of the Capertee Valley between the trees. A most stunning scene towards the back end of the Blue Mountains.
At Kandos we were greeted by the local people with a welcome to country and then a delightful dinner at the community hall served by none other than our own staff.
We were to have had a bush dance but Covid put a stop to that so we just had dinner music by the band.
So after a very long and exhausting day I joined the early crowd back to the train and settled in by 9pm.
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