Mon, 24 Nov 2003

author Tim	location Carss Park, Sydney, NSW, Australia
posted 00:28 AEDT 08/12/2003	section Europe2002/Oceania/Australia/Home Again ( all photos )

Touchdown! ( )
After getting up very early to get ourselves on the road, squeezing four people and all our baggage into Meaghan's little Corsa/Barina, we were on the road. It wasn't long before we were glad of our decision to leave so early - a five car pileup on the M1 and then standard Monday-morning traffic on the M25. The trip was about two hours, after which we bid Meaghan and Dave a farewell for at least a year (at this stage!), thanking them for making our last journey to Heathrow so much easier.
Not much later, we had boarding cards all the way to Sydney (a good thing - I was a little aprehensive that we might have problems with our tickets, since they had come to us from a non-conventional travel agent cheapestflights.co.uk, but I needn't have worried. Similarly for our concerns about getting all our baggage on the plane - both our cases were about the 5kg-over-regulation 25kg we were told we could take, and our excessive hand luggage was professionally ignored. It was all easy from here!
No stamps out of the country for us, and before we knew it we were killing time in departures, spending up the pounds (Liz predictably bought a giant Toblerone, quite a tradition now) and euros (breakfast at an Irish pub there) we couldn't change. The gate appeared and we were off to do some more waiting.
The first flight was no drama other than quite a bit of turbulance. Singapore Airlines amazed us as always, doing their level best to make the long flight go faster with excellent service and plenty of gizmos to play with.
We didn't get much sleep, and by the time we had to get off and change planes in Singapore it was starting to catch up with us. My memory of the free wireless proved hazy, so we just sat for a bit, also amusing ourselves on the moving walkways. Two hours after our first touchdown, and we were ready to board our final flight before home!
It wasn't going to be quite that easy, as an announcement came over the speaker for a doctor to come to the desk asap. Liz is close enough when there is an emergency, so off she dashed. It turned out that an old lady had over-done it and had perhaps suffered a stroke. As always, Liz handled the situation amazingly well and calmed the poor dear down while we awaited the airport doctors' arrival.
We were the last two on the plane (they had held it for us), and after removing the old lady's baggage we were ready for take-off. The second flight was much faster (catching the wind which blows west-east across Australia), and much smoother. No sleep came here either, but after another great flight we were back in Sydney!!! What a strange concept.
Being the good citizens we are, we declared lots of wood and food we were carrying (no problems at all there), and walked out of the terminal building to a huge crowd of people. The smaller but still impressive group of our friends and family who had come to meet us was an amazing sight to see - fifteen months earlier we had left them from not far from here at all, and now after seeing so much we were home.

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