Using eight cameras from different angles on the train, including from the cabin, and a helicopter, there was no commentary and few on-screen graphics as the train made its way across the Nullarbor Plain, down from Broken Hill through Orange, Bathurst and Lithgow, into the Blue Mountains and on to Central Station.

A graphic at the start of the Nullarbor said it was the last curve for 477 kilometres and later the line was pretty well straight through to Blayney, but then it was into the long series of bends on the way to Bathurst and Lithgow that slow trains to a snail’s pace, and that was clearly evident with the Indian Pacific.

The SBS program series name Slow TV certainly fitted the bill as the train slowly snaked its way around the hills.

Orange Rail Action Group wants the bends straightened between Blayney and Lithgow to take 20 minutes off the XPT’s trip, but the government doesn’t seem too interested in improving country rail.

It’s a way to have our 1800s railway upgraded with a faster link to Sydney rather than trains rattling around half the state through little places like Newbridge, Georges Plains, Tarana and Rydal just to get from Orange to Lithgow, a two-hour-and-22-minute trip.

At least deputy premier John Barilaro has now recognised the need to straighten the tracks and might announce something before the March NSW elections.

THE people at Charles Sturt University are looking at a new name as part of 30^th anniversary celebrations in a “refresh for the brand to ensure the university speaks clearly and consistently to students, staff and the public”.

CSU also says it wants to “to look at the bigger picture, the strategy.”

It’s caused a fuss and rightly so because why would you want to trash 30 years of university’s history for political correctness or some other strange reason? And 30 years is nothing.

Look at Oxford University. It’s the oldest in the English-speaking world with teaching getting under way in 1096. That’s 923 years ago. It developed rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.

Or Cambridge – it kicked off in 1209, 810 years ago, when groups of scholars congregated at the ancient Roman trading post of Cambridge to study. Can you imagine Oxford or Cambridge wanting to “refresh” with a name change?

WITH all the damage hail has caused in to Orange cherries and apple crops and to houses and cars in Sydney, a few years back Orange orchardists set up hail cannons around Canobolas and fired them every time it looked like a storm. 

They were eventually scrapped because of noise complaints. The cannons sent shock waves into the sky that were believed to prevent ice forming but there was a lack of scientific evidence they actually worked.

Volkswagen still uses hail cannons outside its factory in Puebla, Mexico, to protect new vehicles in storage yards from hailstone damage.

Local farmers claimed the cannons led to a lack of much-needed rainfall and heavy losses of crops so VW has now agreed to only use them when weather conditions look like hail.