Nine Hours on a Train

A heritage train trip to Maryborough:

Early this morning we drove to Lara to board the train.

Most people on the train had travelled from Melbourne, although some were probably die-hards who got on at Newport at the crack of dawn.

Just outside Geelong the train had to stop because there was a fire beside the tracks somewhere in front of us. And although the emergency web site described the fire as small and safe, it was quite a while before the train line was re-opened and we could proceed. About an hour, in fact!

Eventually we were on our way. Next stop Ballarat! View inside our "heritage" saloon carriage:

Those two little kids did really well. They were on the train before us, so had at least a ten-hour trip. But they were quiet and happy all the way.

So why didn't we just get on the train in Ballarat? Because normally only goods trains run between Geelong and Ballarat, so it was a rare chance to be a passenger on this line.  Not that I managed to get a photo of Lal Lal station as we zoomed through:

That bluestone structure isn't even the main station building, just a shed of some sort beside it. Stay tuned to see the brilliant shot I got on the way back...

The people who got the best photos were probably in the convoy of cars that raced from crossing to overpass to bridge to vantage-point. At each such point, we saw them running back to their cars with their cameras. Between those points, we could at times see them racing along roads ranging from highways to dirt tracks, trying to get in front of the train before the next photo opportunity!

After losing many passengers at Ballarat (who were going to the Beer Festival), we continued on to Maryborough and its amazing station.

The undercover area of the platform is incredibly long.

What about the ceiling?

 Or the floor:

 It's an impressive building!

 Mark Twain visited it in 1895 (5 years after it was built), and apparently described Maryborough as "a railway station with a town attached". And Maryborough was three times as big then as it is now! I didn't get to judge for myself, as we had to make up the hour lost waiting for the fire, so there was no time to explore the town.  But the station was definitely worth seeing! 

Not your average station building.

Time to go home.
Stop in Ballarat to pick up the beer drinkers:

Zoom through Lal Lal station again:

The only down-sides to the day were that the air-con wasn't working properly in our carriage (and it was a pretty hot day) and that this window was filthy! I think for a scenic tour, they should have made sure that everyone could actually see the scenery.

Last stop for us, back at Lara at 7:30:

Then a one-hour drive home. The end of a very long day!

Quilted Heart

Yesterday I pulled out all the distorted stitching I did on Wednesday. It took quite a while, but it was a relief to be rid of it. Today I did all the ditch-stitching with the Sweet 16, which worked much better. Then I started the exercises the quilt is for:

This isn't the first exercise in the class (Continuous Line Quilting by Ann Petersen at Craftsy), but it was the one I was up to watching. I'll have to go back and re-watch the beginning of the class now as I've completely forgotten what was in the early lessons. And run in those threads!

Yellow Gladdies

Another gladiolus open, and this time it's a yellow one:

A little scorched around the edges because of the heat.

Distortion

Yesterday I pin-basted the class quilt I put together on Friday. This morning before the sun got up, I started ditch-stitching it, ready for the free-motion exercises. But I hadn't done much of the stitching before I realised there was a problem:

 Hard to see the problem there. What about with a ruler (and no flash):

Another section:

The stitching has dragged the fabric along, distorting the whole piece. And it is not just the front that is affected. Here is the back view:

So, I am going to have to pull out this stitching, and try again. Of course it was only after I stopped that I remembered what happened last time I used the walking foot.

And even back in 2010 it was giving me problems: Non-walking Foot.

So I think the main cause of the distortion was the faulty walking foot, but does that explain the distortion of the back? Once I have pulled out this morning's stitching, I will try doing the ditch-stitching on the Sweet 16 instead.

Crepe Myrtle

One of the crepe myrtles is in flower:

As I walked past I noticed loud buzzing. There were a couple of honey bees in it, but most of the buzzing was coming from a native blue-banded bee. Can you see it in the photo above?

What if I zoom in:

Could be anything, couldn't it? Will have to try harder to get a picture of the blue bands!

Wallaby Hop

Last night when walking the dogs, we spied a wallaby up ahead:

I took several photos as I walked forward slowly, but when it decided I was too close for comfort, it took off and was across the road in a couple of hops:

In The Garden

A few gladdies have buds, and this one is about to pop open:

Today I planted a few autumn-flowing bulbs, and spread five bags of horse manure around this half of the garden:

Filling in some of the gaps between the wool and sheep manure.

And another of the salvias from my old garden has started flowering:

Salvia "Indigo Spires". It should flower for months now that it has started. Or perhaps it is Salvia "Mystic Spires Blue". I seem to have got their labels mixed up some time since taking the cuttings 18 months ago. I have two different plants labelled as "Indigo Spires", but one of them has to be "Mystic Spires Blue".