HowToGetAcross
New South Wales

Almost anywhere in the state,
without a car.

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What is HowToGet?

Eight hundred thousand square kilometres, one journey planner, and a stubborn rule: use as little car as we can get away with.

HowToGet searches the whole state - every train, coach, bus, ferry and on-demand service in New South Wales - and escalates reluctantly. Walking first. A taxi only where nothing else reaches. And where no timetable goes at all, it asks for the plan a local would actually give you.

As little car
as possible.

  1. 01

    Transit + walking

    Trains, coaches, buses, ferries - and your own two feet.

  2. 02

    + On-demand

    Local shuttles where the fixed routes end.

  3. 03

    + Taxi, last mile

    A car only to the door, never for the journey.

  4. 04

    Ask a local

    No timetable at all? Get the plan a local would give you.

Lockley Pylon

Blue Mountains - 95 km from Sydney - rung one, transit + walking

Cliffs of the Grose Valley under low cloud, Blue Mountains
The Grose Valley from the Mount Hay ridge.

The Blue Mountains line climbs out of Central every half hour. At Leura you trade the train for Mount Hay Road, and the road for a track along the ridge - until the pagodas fall away and the whole Grose Valley opens beneath a lump of rock called Lockley Pylon. No bus goes there. It doesn’t need to.

Hunter Valley

Pokolbin - 165 km from Sydney - rung two, transit + on-demand

Vineyard rows rolling toward the Brokenback Range, Pokolbin
Semillon country, Pokolbin.

Wine country starts where the branch line ends. The train runs up the coast and doglegs inland past Maitland; at Branxton an on-demand shuttle threads you through the vines to the cellar doors. Rung two exists for exactly this - the last miles no timetable was ever written for.

Jenolan Caves

Central Tablelands - 175 km from Sydney - rung three, taxi last mile

Lit limestone columns inside the Orient Cave, Jenolan
The Orient Cave, lit from below.

The caves have taken visitors since 1866 and shrugged off public transport for most of that time - thirty-odd kilometres of mountain switchbacks with no bus on them. So the ladder bends: rail to Katoomba, then, and only then, a car down to the Grand Arch. Two hours of train before one hour of taxi. That order is the whole point.

Now pick your own.

Every destination pre-routed from UNSW on live Transport for NSW schedules.

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