Starting Out

We are about halfway to Sydney, had a reasonable lunch and a couple of mini bottles of white wine. We are travelling cattle and it shows when the person in front of me puts the seat back. There isn’t enough room to read a newspaper. I guess if we were Sydney-siders we would know how to fold a broadsheet newspaper down to paper- back book size.

We arrived a Perth domestic airport well ahead of departure time and got a coffee at one of the coffee shops. All of a sudden about 6 armed police started questioning a man and took him away. He looked perfectly normal to me and it wasn’t until sometime later that we overheard what had transpired. The police produced an X-Ray photo of the bloke’s baggage showing what looked like a hand grenade concealed in his case. They took him down into the bowels of the airport and he had to open the case in front of the boys in blue. It turned out that his wife had tucked a belt with a large buckle into one of her slippers. I have often wondered what happens to baggage deemed to be suspicious at the X-Ray machine.

Just before we boarded our flight to Sydney a flight from Karratha arrived and the ‘fly-in,fly-out’ miners disembarked. A motley lot of passengers they were too! Scraggly, bearded, thong wearing tattoo pallets. We Sydney passengers were a much more civilised lot.

Just another one hour and a bit to landing and our Qantas Boeing 767 hasn’t had a major drop in altitude and no panels have fallen off, in fact it has been quite a pleasant experience. There were a few minutes minor turbulence, but overall a smooth flight.

Later:
We are in the hotel at the moment. The room is modern but about the same size as our bathroom at home.

Just had a bit of a drama…..Martin sent a text message saying he needed to talk to us. It seems that when Joan wrote the cheque for his TAFE fees, she wrote it for more than the actual fee and TAFE could not accept the cheque and give change. Think,think,think?? We rang Helen and she is happy to pay Martin’s fees in cash and text her bank details to us so that we can do an electronic transfer into her account.

Later still:
We have just returned from a pleasant meal and a walk along Darling Harbour. I spied the National Maritime Museum and I will visit it tomorrow while Joan visits the Museum of Contemporary Art. We will board the ship after lunch. Our hotel is just 5 minutes walk from the ship.

Next door to our hotel is KPMG, a big accounting firm. One of my ex-students is a partner in the firm and in the morning I will see if it is possible to see her.