Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2015
Our last day in Australia before flying to Rome in the wee, small hours of Monday morning! After helping Michael celebrate his 50th birthday down in Drouin we spent Saturday night at Bernie's Mum and Dad's place. After breakfast we loaded Gidget and Finbar into my little car as the CX-5 is having a holiday too ... in Drouin in Mum and Dad's garage. The weather was pretty cold and wet as we drove back to Hallam. With the weather turning so wintry in Melbourne it made us very happy to think that we would soon be enjoying springtime in Rome!
Back in Hallam we finished our house cleaning and crammed all of worldly possessions for the next eight weeks into our bags. We both felt like we were packing a fairly minimal amount of clothing, but still our bags seemed filled close to capacity!! All the electrical stuff in Bernie's bag was responsible for much of the weight and bulk in Bernie's bag. My bag was filled with the hair products and tools needed to maintain the high maintenance style that I am sporting at the moment!! At least I will be reducing the amount of product as I go, unlike Bernie who won't be reducing the number of cables, chargers and leads that are needed to keep all of our electronic gadgetry functioning!
We walked the dogs and fitted in a lunch break before our dog/house sitter, Tessa, arrived around mid-afternoon. We acquainted her with the house and ran through Gidget and Finbar's requirements. Although we still had about 12 hours until flight time we didn't want to make Tessa wait until later in the day to move into our house.
To fill in the time until our departure we arranged for our neighbours, Robin and Sandra, to drive us over to Kerry's house for dinner. Kerry's only request in return for feeding us, allowing us to freshen up at her place and driving us to the airport was for Bernie to connect the gas bottle to her new BBQ ... and cook the steaks!!
Sandra and I were keen to see this weeks room reveals on 'The Block' so we made everyone sit through that, much to their disgust. It was a bit of a non-event really with only one couple actually completing the areas they were required to deliver this week. There is a lot of work still to be done before these apartments are going to be fit it be auctioned.
After 'The Block' we said our farewells to Robin and Sandra who will be returning permanently to New Zealand on the 13th of May. It is going to be so weird arriving home and not having our card playing mates around any more. I felt a bit choked up about it, but managed not to cry all over them!
We watched a bit more television with Kerry and then showered and cleaned our teeth before heading out to the airport. On the drive out Bernie checked 'Flightradar24' (plane tracker app) which unfortunately showed that our flight was going to be delayed. Groan! Kerry asked if we wanted to go back to her place to wait, but we reckoned we might as well be at the airport as in Thornbury and then at least Kerry would be able to go to bed and get some sleep.
Even though we were at Tullamarine three hours and forty minutes ahead of the scheduled departure time (and more than four hours before the revised time) we weren't the first people in the check-in queue. We were standing around trying to decide which end of the queue was the front and which was the back when the Emirates staff started to put out their signs and re-arrange their queueing tapes. As luck would have it this was all taking place right in front of us so when everyone started moving we inserted ourselves into a gap and effectively queue jumped almost to the front of the queue. How rude! No-one challenged us though and we figured that it made up for all the times that we have hung back and been polite and missed out on things.
With our bags checked in we proceeded to Customs and Immigration. Would you believe that not just one of us, but BOTH OF US were randomly selected for the bomb screening?! We rarely pass through an airport without at least one of us being selected for screening and could hardly believe it when they wanted to run the bomb sniffer over both of us and our bags. If only we could be randomly selected for upgrades with the same frequency.
Next we headed to the Tourist Refund Scheme counter to claim back the tax on Bernie's new iPad Air. Bernie thought that this was going to be really strait forward as he had used the TRS App to record all the details. All the information recorded on the App was OK, but when the operator looked at the receipt that we had it had 'Reissued Invoice' on the top of it so she couldn't accept it as it must be an original. Unfortunately, when asked in the Apple Store if we wanted an invoice issued in-store or just emailed to us we said just email it. For some reason the emailed invoice has this damn 'Reissued Invoice' endorsed across the top of it. Something for us to follow up when we get home ... Why does something that should be easy have to get so complicated?? And surely any invoice that we obtain from Apple in the future will also be a reissued invoice won't it??!
Hah, it's after midnight and things are going from mildly irritating to downright annoying. No tax refund and now no entry to the Emirates Lounge. What the ...? Apparently we will be able to access the Emirates Lounge in Dubai, but not in Melbourne and the Qantas Lounge isn't open at this hour of the night. So, while everyone else is enjoying a good night's sleep we are slumming around at Departure Gate 9! There aren't many other passengers in the gate lounge so Bernie has stretched out and is taking the opportunity to have a nap. I'm guarding our carry on bags and using the time to make a start on my travel diary.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.162s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 28; dbt: 0.1348s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
joy
non-member comment
happy holidays!
Hope you have a great time. I'm looking forward to some photos of the new hairstyle......