Johnston and six Chinese friends missed the cruise ship on New year's Eve. (photo by Sydney Morning Herald)
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 45-year-old Johnston (Mal Johnston), a (Dee Why) resident in Dewey, and six friends from China's mainland and TW regions, had planned to board the Sydney Harbor cruise ship on New year's Eve to watch fireworks. But because of the delay in train, they missed boarding and each of them paid A $725 for tickets.
They are reported to have lost a total of A $5075.
They had planned to take the 5:30 train from (Chatswood) to (Wynyard), then take a taxi or Uber (Uber) online ride to Piermont (Pyrmont), and take the cruise ship leave wharf. At 7:00 in the evening. Unfortunately, they encountered extensive delays in train.
Johnston said the trip, which normally took only 40 minutes after the Sydney rail network collapsed, took them 93 minutes. They were told to be delayed because of a "signal failure", but Sydney-based train did not tell them how late they would be.
Johnston said the, Vagabond Cruises will only wait 10 minutes, which prevents them from boarding the ship in time for 20 minutes late. The company also said that tickets are not refundable.
It is reported that, after the incident, Johnston 10:30 took six friends to Chechi Live hotel, looking for restaurants to eat.
After that, four of his friends watched the midnight fireworks in the guest room and videotaped the fireworks on TV. The other two friends were again seriously delayed on their return trip.
Johnston and friends said they would be happy in the circumstances of the day, even if it was a partial refund, and felt that the cruise company lacked compassion to deal with the situation very well.
(Gladys Berejiklian), the governor of the new state, said she "fully accepts" the frustration that people were stuck at train on New year's Eve.
She also claimed that "violent lightning and thunder" paralyzed the train system, but ruled out refunds or compensation for passengers.
Dali (Michael Daley), leader of the New State Labour Party, said one of the busiest nights of the year had been mired in chaos, showing "something was wrong" in the train system and noting that authorities had cut its $130 million rail maintenance budget last year.
"the rail system crashed last year and government said it was too hot and dry," Dali said. "now they say it crashed last night because of too much water, and because of the storm."