The train trip to the Central Coast is pretty spectacular.

“It’s only eighty minutes, it costs ten dollars return, and you get to see some spectacular landscape along the way”, I told my niece Julie who was visiting from Darwin.

She’s a member of the Northern Territory team competing at the National Darts Championships, currently being held at Gosford.

By contrast, she and her team mates had flown from Darwin to Sydney (which takes about four hours), and then she drove one of two mini-buses they’d hired from Sydney to Gosford. On a wet and cold Sydney night on a trip that took them a further two hours.

My trip was a pleasure. I ate a sandwich, had a chocolate bar, read the paper (little bored with the continued line about the ABC in The Australian) tweeted, had a nap and almost before I knew it, I’d arrived.

We had a few drinks, grabbed a bite to eat at the nearby Gosford RSL, caught up on some family gossip, and I got to meet some of her team-mates all of whom seemed very nice.

And then came the train trip back home which seemed ever so much longer.

As I got onto the train at Gosford I noticed far too many young women with their skirts too high and far too many young men with their pants too low.

On the train I listened for a while to their conversations which mostly revolved around going out and getting wasted in Sydney tonight.

I tweeted, chatted, and read a few things. And then I got bored.

And then, of course, it was time for the world’s longest train trip – from Redfern to Central. How slow is that…