about midnight
There had been heavy rain and landslips all along the branch railway which left the Great Western Line from Sydney just beyond the Blue Mountains , and ran through thick bush and scrubby ridgy country and along great alluvial sidings -- were the hills on the opposite side of the wide valleys -LRB- misty in depths -RRB- faded from deep blue into the pale azure of the sky -- and over the ends of western spurs to the little farming , mining and pastoral town of Solong , situated in a circle of blue hills on the banks of the willow-fringed Cudgegong River . The line was hopelessly blocked , and some publicans at Solong had put on the old coach-road a couple of buggies , a wagonette , and an old mail coach -- relic of the days of Cobb & Co. , which had been resurrected from some backyard and tinkered up -- to bring the train passengers on from the first break in the line over the remaining distance of forty miles or so . Capertee Station -LRB- old time , `` Capertee Camp '' -- a teamster 's camp -RRB- was the last station before the first washout , and there the railway line and the old road parted company for the last time before reaching Solong -- the one to run round by the ends of the western spurs that spread fanlike , and the other to go through and over , the rough country . The train reached Capertee about midnight in broad moonlight that was misty in the valleys and round the blue of Crown Ridge . I got a `` box-seat '' beside the driver on the old coach . It was a grand old road -- one of the old main coach-roads of New South Wales -- broad and white , metalled nearly all the way , and in nearly as good condition as on the day when the first passenger train ran into Solong and the last-used section of the old road was abandoned . It dated back to the bushranging days -- right back to convict times : it ran through tall dark bush , up over gaps or `` saddles '' in high ridges , down across deep dark gullies , and here and there across grey , marshy , curlew-haunted flats .