Quite a good night for me. We had most
windows open and it got a little cool. Nothing nicking a doona off one of the
single beds didn’t fix. Island Coastal
Units are very nice and great value. Understandably when aiming to keep the
costs under control and tariff as low as possible some little economies have
been made. The towels are quite small, there’s only one pillow I can’t see
extra blankets anywhere, but there is an air conditioner if you need it.
We require a rapid departure today so we are all business packing and breakfasting, showering (as short as possible, water
is precious here to not on mains supply). We’re off and away by 8.30 am passing
yet another kite which is hunting, hovering about the fields as we leave
American River.
It’s a fairly quick trip, 25 minutes into
Kingscote, hubby travelling at a pace to which I have become quite
unaccustomed, only possible in the last decade since they tarred roads on the
island, or so I overheard yesterday. It’s another rainy day, though it seems
that showers don’t last very long. Petrol at the BP is offered at 165.9 cents
per litre. It seems the rains of the cooler seasons have arrived and I know
that they are more than welcome to local residents, human and animal alike. I’m
kicking myself for not stopping to photograph the dry creek and river beds. It
would be interesting to compare them if we do get back here at a more verdant
time of year.
 |
| Yep, that's our rental there on the left of this shot! Way too far to walk, clearly! LOL |
We seem to be the only passengers here. We
needed to allow some time here for any rearranging of the luggage weight across
articles. Hmm. No queue to check in. That’s handy. We weight all bags and I am
nothing less than amazed that every bag is showing as A OK on the old school
scales. I am sure these scales must be a
bit more generous than the digital ones in Adelaide. Good, that’s a relief!
I find myself a power point and kill the
time until our flight.. which we discover is a half hour later than I was
thinking, by catching up on some journalling The battery on my little e-machine
is fairly useless these days. A new laptop sits prominently on my shopping list
before we go to New Zealand in June.
At a more sensible arrival time, our fellow
passengers turn up in a bit of a scrum. I'm pleased to have arrived early,
though there are only about 12 passengers on the early flight this morning,
evenly spaced around the plane which I suppose is due to the need to balance
weight distribution.
We amuse ourselves during the very short
flight by capturing some images of the small plane. Hubby goes for the wing, I
go for prop and clouds and interesting angles.
At Adelaide we alight and are bussed across
to a special, remote, Rex terminal and emerge blinking wondering where in heck
we are. This disorientation is rapidly overcome and is appreciated as we learn
something new on the way to the departures terminal.
It stands to reason but
assistance dogs need a toilet too. Here at the airport they have a conveniently
located, fenced area complete with fake fire hydrant and fake grass, there’s
obviously a drainage system for hosing the area down. But don’t think any old
passing pooch can avail themselves of this state of the art facility. This is
for assistance dogs only.
I had allowed what I had begun to think was a
stupidly long lag between flights today, but it all turns out well. We spend a
while reweighing our bags to test my theory about differences in scales. Yeah.
Not by a huge amount but there’s certainly a difference. We are still OK
overall though. We rearrange things so the hand luggage is as light as possible
and complete our check in. Hubby struggles but finally masters the unexpectedly
error prone process of attaching luggage tags to his suitcase. Sheesh, those airline workers make it look so
easy haha.
Bags dropped it is time to find something to eat, and get some
exercise walking up and down the terminal checking out the options. Most
offerings of any size are about $20, sandwiches about $8 or 9. Hungry Jacks doesn’t make my short list. I
really don’t want to spend up big. We end up sharing a toasted chicken Panini at a compromise price of about $14.50 and hubby has a large cappucino for $5.20. We
also sampled some cold, not very nice sweet offerings we don’t see around much.
Meh. We wouldn't pay $5 for those again.
We’re making a staged return to the world. At American River we made the
discovery that Federal Labor has been busily presenting a competent and united
front. Ahem. Oh FFS. It’s in the newspaper again and hubby
is busily reading the paper provided at the airport café. I’m over it.
Seriously over it. We head back to our departure gate. Delight of delights.
There is a business hub space free and I plug myself in and continue work. It’s
great to be able to make some use of these periods of enforced down time.
Flying out of Adelaide, Glenelg is easily
identifiable by its tall glass fronted modern buildings as we climb steadily up
through the clouds. Within half an hour
the clouds have cleared and we pass over a township by the mighty Murray River
which wiggles and squirms its way to the sea at Adelaide.
I manage some journalling until the battery
dies. Sigh. We must be into NSW now. We see scattered plots of broadacre crops
among large swathes of grazing land. A small township by a ribbon on green as
another river makes a run across the country. Perhaps this is the Murrumbidgee.
Cloud drifts past as Top Gear’s 50 Years of
Bond Cars provides entertainment on drop down screens throughout the plane. Richard Hammond reads an excerpt from the book
of Casino Royale and a glance out the window suggests we've reached the central
west with its more intensive cropping.
Cloud is visible across to the east. Sydney’s wet summer is
transitioning to a wet Autumn by the looks. Predictably the plane dips forward
as we begin our descent into Sydney, gradually losing altitude as the
wilderness of the Blue Mountains World Heritage area passes below. Warragamba dam, across the wide stretch of
suburbia then we head to the south and out to sea and back across and past the
Royal National Park and Port Hacking drawing closer and closer to the waters
of Botany Bay before we touch down at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport. Home. I am annoyed because on the plane they
have made what I regard as bullshit statements to the effect of “you aren't allowed to bring a long list of fruits, vegetables, seeds, honey etc into
Sydney”. Oh yeah. A hostie comes to warn me that the quarantine
officials might take my pussy grass off me. “Well, I guess we’ll see.” She’s
trying to be tactful, but is just patronizing.
We emerge from the plane. Sydney’s 30 C weather plainly felt in the
stuffy heat of the airbridge. I look around. Where are all the quarantine
officials? Where is some signage about these strict rules we've been told
apply, and the promised bins for
depositing contraband. Oh.. this is SYDNEY airport. No quarantine on domestic
arrivals here. NONE. ZILCH. ZIP. Not a
sign, not an honour system. Nothing.
We collect our luggage and high tail it
down to the train station in good time to buy our tickets and catch the next
train home where we find a catastrophe has occurred. Hubby goes to move the rug
in the family room and it is sopping wet. Really sopping wet. What the? Oh look at
that. The fish tank is half empty. &%^*. Well, that brings us down to earth
with a thud. The next three or so hours
is spend removing wet rug outside to hang over the rail of the al fresco area,
removing the fish tank with the assistance of two year old grandson who cheers us with his enthusiastic cries of "fishies, catch?" Moving the big
entertainment thingy to check underneath and inspect the damage to our beautiful (and rather expensive) solid timber
floor. Luckily this problem seems to have arisen recently and damage is minimal
to start with and hopefully will improve over time as it dries out. Thank god
for the incredible absorbency of woollen rugs!
So much for a quiet happy evening of holiday news and relaxation!
PS Next morning the floor is already looking much drier, so fortunately we think there's not much lasting damage done. Phew.
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