Somehow a journey always starts with a bridge to somewhere. I’ve brushed off the sand and shelved the flip-flops, but packed the waterproof snow boots. Got up early in fact to see if I could get a start on those final emails, before setting of  on the next great cyber-terrestrial journey.  It’ll be around the world and probably take a whole month before getting back home.  Not sure if I would have gained or lost a day on the way north-east and around the outback of the globe to Sydney.  Its all a bridge to somewhere.  People talk about the journey, but I tend to think as before and after the journey – joined by two bridges – one at the beginning – leaving home – and one at the end – arriving and thinking about normal life once more.

Anyway bridge number one being the Sydney Harbour bridge – a well known landmark is always a great physical expression of that journey from the bush down to the airport.  I try to catch a cab or a train over it – probably to say goodbye somehow in my head to all the local domestic things and hello  to the next phase of the journey.  Today however, with the morning light fading to Autumn in a few days time, the radio chimes out about a multi-car pileup on the bridge with delays and cell phone calls hanging in clouds of frustration among the thousands of cars stuck fast on it’s superstructure.

So – backup bridge plan in Sydney is to catch a country train over a smaller bridge, way up river from the harbour and which offers a convenient bypass to all the snarl-ups on the great coat-hanger. Not the bridge I imagined, but a practical one.

Its around a 50 minute train[s] to the International airport, covering most of Sydney from the North to the inner South where the airport is located.  Jutting out into Botany Bay are the two main North South runway’s we’ll be taking off from.  Rain set in just crossing the bridge and now it’s damp, cloudy and otherwise – not pleasant outside.  This seems to be what is left of the tropical cyclones which just devastated Yeppoon and Rockhampton earlier in the week.  A category 5 storm, which by the time it hit’s Sydney is really just rain and cloud swirling down from the north east coast.

Even the barman is not standing around at the Bondi Bar at the International airport terminal.  That’s how deserted it can be on a mid week afternoon.  The flight will leave mid afternoon and arrive in the morning sometime pacific time.