Thursday 27 Feb, Auckland to Perth

Thursday 27 Feb

Nana, Alyssa, Kat and I met at Jamaica Blue for lunch, just next door to the infamous Szimpla restaurant, of bagel fame, from our last visit. I somehow managed, on the literal walk from the Warehouse carpark to there, to tweak my calf somehow, which was of high entertainment value to Kat :) We had a quick lunch and then headed off to the International terminal. Even the drop-off point is still a bit of a walk but we arrived in plenty of time. The magical automated luggage-handling machines were not being particularly magical, with the queue at an absolute stand-still for about 30 minutes, then crawling after that. We could have walked our luggage to the plane and loaded it ourselves quicker. Luckily we were quite early because after our luggage was finally loaded, the queue that had built up behind us stretched halfway down the terminal. I had booked a wheelchair and, while standing in the queue in the sun for half an hour, I asked a lovely person about it. She duly delivered Nana to a wheelchair to sit down about 20 m away, and didn't bring her back! So I sort of waved and did sign-language to her at a distance, hoping she wasn't busting for the loo or anything.

We were able to take the fast track through customs and that all went smoothly. The flight to Melbourne was about 3/4 full. We boarded early and had our own safety briefing. Dinner was the choice of (hot) chicken and mushroom with sweet potatoes and veges, or (cold) beef pastrami and chick pea salad. We arrived in Melbourne and had to collect our bags and go through customs and then transition to the Domestic terminal (same building, but a maze of corridors and quite a long walk). I hobbled along behind the extremely efficient Qantas rep who was setting some new terminal record for speed. She even became a little frustrated (with me I guess) for not collecting our bags from the carousel quickly enough... because one of them hadn't come out yet. Maybe it was affecting her timing! In fairness, they do provide a very good service, really attentive and sorting things out, definitely no complaints, just an observation!

At Melbourne, we called Ken (Jones) to say we were successfully halfway, and then we had several Qantas ground staff check where we were and if we were ready to board and please stand by etc. The plane to Perth was bigger (2-4-2 seating), and really comfortable. We left at about 8pm local time (10pm NZ), and arrived in Perth just after 9pm local time (2am NZ). Between the crying little one in the row ahead, and the woman watching THE most hilarious show two rows ahead, it was not the most sleep-filled. On arrival in Perth there was no customs desks, but they do have customs rules about bringing fresh fruit and veges into WA and big bins everywhere to dump them in. Not that we had any, but it must happen all the time being a domestic border.

I delivered Mum to the taxi stand. She wondered aloud why we would take an expensive taxi when we could surely take a train into Fremantle. Seeing that that, combined with finding a hotel not really anywhere near the train station at the other end, was pretty much the exact last thing I felt like doing at getting on for 3am NZ time, I overruled her there. I tried to do the right thing and deliver the wheelchair back to Qantas, parking the wheelchair near the queuing rope thing and waiting in what I thought was an obvious place to talk to someone. By the time I was noticed (in fact, before I got noticed), some random person had come up and wandered away with the wheelchair... so I gave it a secret wave and wished it well in its future, and then ditched the line and went back to Mum. The taxi driver gave a big sigh when we asked to go to Fremantle, not sure if he was upset at the thought of another $80 fare or something, how frustrating. He didn't set any Google map, and there were several road closures on our way, so I'm pretty sure we took the long, scenic way, but we did eventually make it to our lovely hotel.

The beds looked (and were) amazingly comfortable, and once I finally managed to convince Nana to actually get in one, we had a good sleep, through to about 6am local. We will definitely need a nap today!

Not many photos to share yet, but we are heading out on the town later this morning.