When we arrived in Queenstown last Sunday, we saw a poster for "The Picnic Train" on Australia Day. This is the continuation of a tradition well over 100 years old where a special train is put on for the people of Queenstown to travel to the seaside town of Strahan for an annual picnic. (The tradition isn't exactly that old however...the railway was discontinued in 1963 and the rails taken up. Thirty years later the community succeeded in attracting enough funding and investors to re-establish the corridor, lay the track, rebuild the bridges, refurbish several cars and locomotives, and a new railway was born, the West Coast Wilderness Railway, http://www.wcwr.com.au/) We got our tickets and were on the train at 7:30 AM for the three hour journey to Strahan.
Our engineer loves her job!
The King River Gorge...she stopped the train on the trestle bridge so photos could be taken...
A little knitting time sitting in the gorgeous wood panelled carriage. This is Black Sassafras wood.
The picnic was a fun time for kids!
And of course we had to try some of the picnic food...a sausage topped with fried onions and relish wrapped in a slice of white bread and a beef patty with the same toppings between two slices of white bread!
(We then left the picnic to walk into town in search of more appetizing food and beverage!) and a walk through a wonderful west coast rain forest to Hogarth Falls.
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