This morning, I woke up early and went inside the house to say goodbye to Sam before he went to work. While I waited for him, I had a cup of tea and then he emerged with his briefcase and I bade him farewell as he left to go to the office. I headed back to the caravan and a bit more of a snooze before I got up properly, had my shower and finished the final bits of packing.
When I was done with the packing, I went back in the house and sat chatting to Tricia for a bit while we had a cup of tea. We discussed Skype and I had a go at installing it on their computer, but for some reason it didn’t work, so I tried again, had a fiddle around with it but to no avail.
It was time to make our way to the airport, so we hopped into the car and set off. Tricia said the journey can often take quite a long time, but today the traffic seemed to be with us and we were there in no time at all! I said goodbye to Tricia, dropped my bag off and made my way through the virtually non-existent security, then I was done and able to have a mooch around the terminal.
After a visit into a few shops, I settled down with a cup of coffee and was astonished to notice that there was free wifi in the airport – this is unheard of! I certainly haven’t seen that before, every other airport I have been to so far charges through the teeth for wifi connection. I waited at the gate, clicking about, then was entertained by a large group of Polish people who arrived en mass to welcome a couple of Polish boys off the plane; they all wore Poland tshirts, waved flags and scarfs, shook maracas whilst singing a Polish song (possibly the national anthem?!). It was quite sweet and they all seemed so happy to be reunited, staying for ages in the terminal, still singing and being jovial.
Shortly after they left, it was time for us to board. I was second onto the plane – this is the second time I have now whipped my way so quickly onboard a plane, I almost felt like a German person getting their towel out at the swimming pool! I got settled in my seat and once again had managed to score myself a seat with no one sitting in my row or in front of me, so could make myself nice and comfortable.
We waited for a while and I wondered why we weren’t going anywhere, then they made an announcement asking for a ‘Miss Yeung’. They asked for ‘Miss Yeung’ a couple more times but no one came forward, so they explained that they had to remove Miss Yeung’s bag from the plane as she hadn’t shown up. I looked out the window and watched them do this. I was somewhat confused why we didn’t leave then, instead hanging about seemingly for no reason. A few minutes later, the pilot made an announcement that there was a problem with the second engine. What?! Problem with the second engine?! He assured us they were in the process of fixing it. This panicked me slightly and the glass of water we were all offered as we waited did not sound that appealing. Ten minutes after the initial announcement, he made another saying that the problem had been fixed but they were just testing it quickly, so we would have to wait. The idea of testing it ‘quickly’ concerned me quite a lot – surely we wanted them to test it well, not quickly! Five minutes passed and the pilot declared that we were ready to leave.
Eventually we were on our way to Sydney, leaving 45mins late. It was a relatively eventless flight, I chatted to one of the flight attendants which seemed to reap some rewards – I got both a chicken pie and a sandwich, as well as a cup of coffee and a juice! Soon enough we were descending into Sydney and I was disembarking the plane. As I walked into the terminal, Robyn was there waiting for me and it was lovely to see her. My bag arrived quite promptly and we made our way to the car for our two hour drive to Berry.
On arriving at the house, I was reunited with Jim. Just to clarify, I stayed with Jim & Robyn when I came to Australia in 2005 with Rotary and then again when I came to visit in 2008. I was introduced to Roland, their new kitten, and found their dog Ben, looking much older and a bit weary. We sat down with a beer and chatted about my travels and their news. Their daughter Heather was not in, but she called and we chatted on the phone for a bit.
Robyn cooked us a delicious dinner of salmon and we enjoyed that before settling down on the sofa to watch Masterchef. We then sat and chatted, with a couple of beers and a box of chocolate macadamias, watching a few more cooking programmes including Ace Cakes and Hairy Bikers before turning in, feeling cosy in a room and a bed that I know well, so feels like home.
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