Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2010
Leaving Melbourne at 6am, to get a flight at 7am is cutting it fine, but I was confident in Jason’s driving to get me there in time. The good thing about arriving close to the time of the gate shutting it that you can get pushed to the front of the queue, much to the dismay of all the other people who have managed to get there on time and have waited patiently. I need to fly back to Sydney to catch a connecting flight to Perth which would be the next place for me to visit in Australia.
‘Would you be able to put a fragile tag on my rucksack please’ I asked the woman behind the check in counter.
‘What do you have in there that is fragile’ she replied.
‘Just aftershave’ I answered.
The amount of times I have opened my rucksack and had split shower gels I thought that maybe the handlers won’t give my bag such a kicking with a fragile tag on. As I walked through security I get a tap on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me sir, do you mind if I conduct a random search on your bag and yourself. Have you had one of these searches before?’ asked a security officer
I don’t understand why they ask if you mind, because they give you a piece of paper to read before they conduct the search and if you decline then you can’t fly and probably spend the night in a cell with no daylight.
‘Why of course not. Anything to help’. I replied.
After checking me for any explosive devices I might be carrying, I was on my way to board my flight back to Sydney. The flight to Sydney left on time and I was back in Sydney within the hour. I picked up my rucksack (no split shower gel) and walked to check into my Perth flight. I punched in my check-in code on the check-in computer. After thinking about it for about 30 seconds, the screen showed me, no ticket found. For a split second, I wondered if I got the dates right. I reached into my bag, checked the flight. The dates were right, and I tried a different computer. This time it worked. My flight and booking at midday was ok. I was eve offered the chance to take an earlier flight at 10.20am. Sweeeet. I checked in on-line and then proceeded to drop my bag off. It was at that moment, when Qantas check in servers went down. For 30 minutes it was panic in the Sydney Domestic Terminal. No-one knew what was happening. People from the International terminal were being moved to the Domestic terminal, even though the problem was worldwide. Having 4 months left of my holiday left and not in a rush to go anywhere I just wandered off, grabbed a coffee, read a newspaper and listened to the announcements. They resorted to checking people in departure order. When my flight was called I walked up and dropped my bag, again asking for it to be handled with the greatest of care.
‘Sir, you will have to take your bag to the fragile counter’ said the woman behind the desk.
Not a problem, I dropped my bag off and walked through security for the second time that day.
‘Excuse me sir, do you mind taking part in a random search. Have you done of these searches before’? . It must be Groundhog day.
To this, I just laughed and mentioned that one of his colleagues asked me just that question 2 hours ago in Melbourne. After being swabbed for the second time that morning for explosives I was on my way to board my flight to Perth.
2000 miles away from Sydney and I am still in the same country. I left a wet Sydney in a hooded jumper and cargo pants, and arrived in Perth in 40 degree heat. I went to collect my rucksack and low and behold, it wasn’t there. The computer outage Qantas had experience meant that my bag, along with about half the people’s bags on my plane where M.I.A. For seven and a half months I have carried that thing around 2 continents and it goes missing on a domestic flight in Australia. W.T.F. After queuing for an hour to report my bag missing and to vent to anger at someone, when it came to my turn I thought to myself if there was any point getting angry as the hundreds of people before me would have expressed their disappointment with their bag going missing. I just handed my details in and the guy behind the counter wished me a good day.
‘As good a day as I can possibly have with only one pair of pants mate’.
I walked out of the terminal and it was then the heat hit me. It was like ‘hopping out of the frying pan and into the fire’. Everyone walking past me was in a vest, tee-shirt and shorts. I am stood waiting for a bus into town sweating like a (please insert your own sweating like joke here please). 25 minutes later and after losing a gallon of water a bus turns up.
I found a hostel in town and set about what would the best plan regarding my bag. I only had five days in Perth, and in that time I wanted to get to Fremantle and Margaret River. This little set back wasn’t helping my timings at all. I thought a shower would be the best solution for the time being and then I could have a think after I had cooled down. Oh wait, my towel was in my rucksack, which is somewhere in Australia. No shower. I went out and bought a tee-shirt from every backpacker favourite store, Calvin Klein. Budget, budget, budget is the name of the game, not. Then I went out and bought a new batch of toiletries and a towel. For the rest of the day I was on hold with Qantas trying to find out where my bag was. It was no use, I decided the best idea would be to go down to the baggage desk in the morning and speak to someone.
The following morning I went back to the airport to see if my bag had made it to Perth. After ten minutes of waiting the assistant ventures off into the back room and reappeared moments later with my bag. I was at that point the happiest man on earth, but a second thought came into my mind, what I am going to do with 3 containers of cocoa butter. I have far too many toiletries for a backpacker anyway, and with my little shopping spree the following day I was going to have to buy a new bag just for my toiletries.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.03s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0336s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
the shref
non-member comment
Racism
haha love the fact you keep getting searched!! im sure you will cry racism but you are prob on an international watch list for smuggling those tomatoes in South America!!