Puffing Billy

We were not disheartened even at the idea of boarding a bus to cover a distance of 4 kilometres from Burnley to Camberwell due to the railway track maintenance. I never had a trouble with the bus journeys except in my childhood days. I still remember the times when we had to board a ‘fast passenger’ bus from Trivandrum to Quilon. Those 3 hours of time was the most terrible of the times that I ever experienced. But Prashanth still has a problem with busses. He likes travelling long distances by road only if it’s a car.

We were absolutely tiered by the time we reached Belgrave and we had to take some rest at the station before we went into the Puffing Billy station. Just as we came in, the train to Lakeside just started to move.                                                                                                

The horn of the old steam engine was wonderful to hear. 

Puffing Billy is the train run with a steam engine which was built in the early 1900 to carry timber from the country side into the city. It still runs today and serves as a major tourist attraction.

We tried to climb the steep hills later. But we lacked the strength to climb and felt that we can never make it to the heights. So we turned back and started the way back to the bottom and then headed straight towards a restaurant as usual. This was the first time we felt very weak to walk. So we thought to abandon this trip and come back some other day.

Shopping was the next best thing when you feel tired. We reached the DFO at Cheltenham and arrived in a taxi to the shopping mall. It was a big mall, but we managed to cover the whole area in a record time of ten minutes which was very unusual for Prashanth and me who take at least an hour to walk through all the aisles of the Safeway and BigW. We took a taxi again to the next shopping mall ‘The Southland Shopping’. No one could stop Prashanth from buying junk from the nearest Mc Donald’s. He could never resist from eating those French fries.