Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

Australia bound! . . . Friends, I’ll be visiting my homeland for the next four weeks.

I have my dear friend Noelle to thank for the picture at right. In the first couple of ones she took just before she drove me from my home in south Minneapolis to the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, I looked kinda stiff and tense, no doubt due to the rather hectic previous few days I’d experienced getting ready for my trip. She made me laugh and loosen up, however, for this particular shot.

My flight from the Twin Cities took me to San Francisco.

Above: The United Airlines aircraft that took me from San Francisco to Sydney. It was a 14-and-a-half hour flight.


Left: Enroute from San Francisco to Sydney I watched the in-flight movie A Wolf Among Swans . . . twice! Yeah, I enjoyed it that much. It’s a 2024 biopic on the famed Brazilian dancer Thiago Soares, an image of whom I used in this 2015 Wild Reed post.

Above: The view of Sydney’s Port Jackson as we were coming in to land — Saturday morning, April 11, 2026.

Above and below: Sydney’s Central Station, where I caught a train to Broadmeadow, just outside the coastal city of Newcastle. It’s about a 3-hour train ride.

Above: A colourful character at Central Station.

Above: With my cousin Sharon and her husband Ross with whom I stayed on my first night back in Australia.

Above: Australian sunset — Raymond Terrance, April 11, 2026.

Above and below: Sharon and Ross drove me back to Broadmeadow Station the next day so that I could continue my journey northward.

NEXT: Return to Gulmarrad

Images: Michael J. Bayly.