Off to Palm Cove

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This morning we were up and about the same time as we would have been to go to work so that we could take the dogs for a long walk and finish off the house cleaning to make it neat and tidy for Eddie the house sitter. Not to worry, the day of travel is always a busy one and the relaxation only starts when we reach our destination!!

Eddie arrived right on time at noon to meet the dogs, get a rundown on the house and appliances and have a bit of lunch with us before driving us to the airport. He had ridden his bike from Carnegie so, with it being such a warm day, he was pretty hot and sweaty when he arrived!! Nothing a cold glass of water couldn't fix. But we were such inhospitable hosts that poor Eddie had to ask for a glass of water before we thought to offer him one!

By 2.00pm Eddie was confident that he knew all he needed to about the house and the dogs and we headed off to Tullamarine. Apart from the bottleneck that is currently a problem at the Western Ring Road exit we had a fabulous mid-afternoon run out to the airport and arrived well before our scheduled flight.

Bernie had checked in on-line so all we had to do was drop our bags off. I flew a couple of weeks ago using the new Q-tag on my bag. Somehow I fluked it that trip and put the bag on so that the reader could read the tag. Bernie didn't have the same beginner's luck having to turn his bag around so that the reader could scan his Q-tag. It is important to have the Q-tag facing the scanner!!

Bernie was worried about how our bags would be transferred from our MEL - BRI flight to our BRI - CNS flight, but obviously our Qantas membership had everything linked to it and when the Q-tags were scanned the computer knew that the bags were going to Cairns even though we had only scanned our boarding pass for the MEL - BRI leg of the journey.

Just as we were about to leave the bag drop area a lady arrived who hadn't self-checked her bags before so she asked if she could watch how it was done. We said we had already checked both our bags, but we were happy to help her check hers in. It's one off those things - it's daunting the first time when you are not sure how to do it, but easy once you know how!

With a bit of time to fill in before our flight we popped into the Qantas Club lounge for a snack. Bernie was thrilled that our flight was running on time. He flew to the Gold Coast for work on Monday and his Jetstar flight was delayed for FOUR HOURS!! Instead of leaving for Coolangatta at 4.55pm he finally departed Tullamarine at 9.00pm!

The only slight hiccup that we had before our departure was that we arrived at our seats only to discover that someone was already sitting in one of them. He should have been in the row in front ... but there was someone sitting there! It turned out that he was in the right row, but had sat himself in 22B instead of 22E - ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AISLE!! Talk about dyslexia gone mad! After these two guys got themselves sorted we were able to buckle ourselves into our seats.

Well, our flight was going really well until we reached Brisbane airspace where we had to go into a holding pattern due to the amount of air traffic coming into Brisbane. The Captain told us that it was really busy due to the Easter holiday. Who would have thought?? With school holidays too, I guess delays were always on the cards.

When we finally landed we discovered that the plane that we had flown up in from MEL would be the one continuing onto CNS. So Bernie really never had to worry about our bags at all. Unlike us, they didn't even have to leave the plane!!

Our delay coming into Brisbane resulted in us leaving a bit late on our next leg to Cairns. When we boarded the plane, rather unbelievably there was someone already in one of our seats AGAIN!!! Another passenger who had accompanied us from MEL couldn't believe that we had someone in our seat again and had to ask another traveller to move before we could claim our seats. Bernie told her that it was less of a problem than the delays he experienced when he travelled on Monday.

Our arrival into CNS although late, was entirely uneventful. Bernie went straight to the Thrifty Car Hire desk while I staked out the baggage carousel. I was still waiting for the bags by the time Bernie came over with the car keys. With bags in tow we made our way out into the balmy tropical evening to find our hire car. Our luggage only took up a fraction of the boot space in the big Ford sedan that Bernie had booked.

It was an easy drive up the coast to Palm Cove and we finally made it into our beautifully appointed apartment at about 11.30pm. Cairns really is a very long way from Melbourne!! Thank goodness we have a direct flight back - that should shave quite a bit of time off the journey home.

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