Los Angeles - Melbourne

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2nd September, 2022

We both spoke to family before finally getting to sleep about 3am which was 5am New York time which is what our bodies were still on.

I don’t think either of us slept very well. At least we could have a leisurely shower.

Walked down to the servo to get some smokes for Sandra and then to Denny’s for breakfast. I know Sandra is not going to miss the USA coffee.

Back at the hotel, we sat out by the pool doing not a lot.

We had a late checkout of 3pm but with the time difference to Australia, we couldn’t go to the airport till we had heard from Courtney about the new flight. We hung around in the lobby of the hotel, making sure our devices stayed fully charged and dozing.

By 5:30pm, we hadn’t heard from Courtney, so we decided that we should go to the airport so that when we did hear from her, we could check in immediately.

Luckily, the hotel had a free shuttle bus so we hopped on that and started talking to a lady who said she was going home to Australia. She now lives in the States but she still has some family at home. Amazingly, as we were chatting she said she was originally from Springvale. It is such a small world. We didn’t know any of the same people as there was quite an age difference between us.

We sat around the airport for a couple of hours with me constantly emailing Courtney for updates but she kept saying she was waiting for Qantas to issue the tickets. In the end, I saw a break in the check in line at Qantas so I went and asked a very nice man about getting our tickets issued. It took about 45 minutes, but eventually we had boarding passes in our hands. After so much stress, we both cried when we got the passes.

We immediately went through security and to a bar to get a much needed drink and something to eat.

Our plane took off just after midnight. We both dozed, watched crap on the screens and just willed the plane to hurry up. Landed in Sydney at 8:30am, went straight through customs with no problems, and on to the flight to Melbourne which left just after 10am. We landed in Melbourne at 11:30am and Jodie (Sandra’s neighbour) was there to pick us up. She is a godsend and it was nice to have a friendly face to greet us. We are home!

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