Start...

Sydney Terminal, as good a place as any to start to plan to go half way around the globe by public transport.

From here to get to the next bit you need to get to Darwin. Now the straight forward way would be to Catch the Indian Pacific to Adelaide and then The Ghan to Darwin, but why missout on all that variety.

You can travel a long way by public transport in NSW but you do need to draw a line. Yes you could get to Broken Hill by public transport I guess, but you can only endure so much 'Travel'. You have alot of factors to consider in setting an outer limit of endurance and risk with any travel plans. Why not start out with something different, book your bags in at Central and head west on Sydney's public Transport.

The weakest link in the plan is the IP, for that you need to work backwards from your critical last connection time. You do eventually need to catch up with the IP. Travel plans should consider these last minute stops:

Mon,Tue           Arr   Dep
Sydney    00:00 14:55 14:55
Lithgow   03:19 18:09 18:09
Bathurst  04:41 19:44 19:44
Blayney   05:45 20:51 20:51
Orange    06:14 21:25 21:25
Parkes    09:13 23:23 23:23

The sydney metropolitan bus network extends to penrith in the west, from there you can get Cityrail trains as far as Lithgow and CountryLink Bus/Rail travel beyond here. The countrylink Western Timetable doesnt integrate the Indian Pacific you you need to do some work.

You can get a morning Explorer service and spend the day at Parkes

• Sydney 0620 | Parkes 12:55 || 23:23 (no thanks)

Orange presents a problem, Orange and Orange East Fork are not the same station, east fork is about 2km from the middle of town. You do get to spend 4 hours there but it will be dark.

• Lithgow 15:20 | Orange 17:00 || 21:25 (4h25)

A number of buses can get you to Bathurst but Blaney only allows a 4 min window to catch the IP. Bathurst is probably as far as you want to go before bunking down on the IP for the night

• Lithgow 15:20 | Bathurst 16:15 || 19:44 (3h15)

Given the Blue Mountains end at Lithgow you may want to just fall back to boarding here

• Lithgow 18:09

Back from here you can enjoy the Blue Mountains via Cityrail's Blue Mountain Line, might be able to go in and out of scheduled services with the Blue Mountain Bus Company although the train will give a better view. A stop at Katoomba or the Zig Zag is a good call.

Metropolitain Sydney gives you plenty of Public Transport marvels, you could spends days here and never catch the same service twice.

The ferry is only around 1km from the station across the middle of town.

Dep Parramatta station 12:27/14:54 | arr Lithgow 14:25/17:12 || 18:09 join the IP

Get the Ferry to Paramatta from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour

• Dep Circular Quay 0900/1000/1100/1230 +60 mins later into Parramatta
• or get lost on the myriad of buses running from Sydney via whoopwhoop to Parramatta, allow 2 hours
  

0800 Start out leave your bags for the IP at Central and take the Train to Circular Quay

• This is as close as Australia gets to a Metro, the City Circle Line
  

• or Tram to Darling Harbour

• Sydney lost its trams in the 50's; the Metro Light Rail isnt really a metro and by light rail standards doesn't use light rail, its the full 50kg/m
• With a bit of creativity you can also jump on the Monorail
  

After reading this and the next post I realised that there is another way to get to Darwin, thats a little more interesting...
See later entry Sydney - Darwin Alt Route

Planning this out is easier if you use tools like Gantt charts or timespace graphs. Have got my style for this down yet. Look for the bolds, there the critical bits.