On our way!

Melbourne, Australia

Last night was spent testing all my devices to make sure they all talk to each other. Of course an iPhone 6 doesn’t want to have anything to do with my 2009 MacBook Pro running an operating system that is three versions out of date. Everything else seems to synch as expected, so I’ll just have to cope with that.

This morning my body clock decided that it was a weekday or that I had too much to do to sleep in and woke me far earlier than is reasonable on a Saturday morning. Mostly the jobs revolved around packing, setting up the pot plants and animals as best as I could to minimise the work our friendly pet sitter will have to do, and making sure I didn’t forget my contact lenses. (Who does that, you ask. Yup.)

I managed to fit everything that Kramstable had “packed” last night into his suitcase, and the six teddies that are coming with us are in his carry on bag. Six. I expect we’ll need a roll call every day: Pete, Zoe, Bruno (who is the Proboscis monkey I liberated from a souvenir shop in Brunei airport last year), Dan, Tigger and Sidney.

I also managed to cram in a large assortment of leggings and cold weather gear into my own suitcase. We’re expecting cooler weather than we’ve been having in Tasmania, so I hope it doesn’t end up like last year, where it ended up being a lot warmer than we’d packed for. I don’t think there’s any danger of that in Glacier country.

Cables. Check. Chargers. Check. Travel Cards. Check. Passports. Check. Contact lenses. Check. Are you sure? Double check.

Finally we were ready to go. I checked the Hobart and Melbourne airport websites to find out if our flights were running as scheduled. I still wasn’t 100% confident about the transfer time in Melbourne, but it all looked good.

We, and our bags, were checked in all the way through to Christchurch, and we had enough time for a relaxing beverage at the airport bar (which is much improved with the addition of the Iron House beers). “You won’t be happy until we’re on the plane to Christchurch will you,” says Slabs, watching me check the Melbourne airport website for the sixth time.

You know the answer to that.

The plane we’d be leaving on arrived on time, the ETD was still 4pm, and indeed that’s when we left. Arrival in Melbourne was a fraction early (good) and the advice on the departures board was to “proceed to security”. Pull devices, the ziplock bags with liquids out of our bags, remove belt, hope there’s nothing in my pocket I’ve forgotten about. As a special bonus I got to step into the full body scan capsule, which resulted in one of the officers having to pat down my ankles, because clearly I have dodgy ankles.

Then all that was left to do was to get through the “Border Force” checks. Very long line. Not many officers. Moved relatively quickly, and it took us about 30 minutes to get through. I could hear people behind us reassuring each other that the plane would wait for them. In the end there was nothing to worry about, just like the airline guy had said, and our flight was called as we were walking to the gate. Pretty much perfect timing really,

So we’re about an hour into the flight.We didn’t have time to get dinner at the airport so I’m getting hungry, and smelling the food that the higher fare class passengers is getting is making it worse! I’m also very thirsty…

We’ll be arriving in Christchurch at just before midnight (NZ time) after a 3.5 hour flight. Hoping that getting through customs won’t be too onerous, and then we can transfer to the motel. It’s going to be a long night, but we’re looking forward to starting our kiwi adventures tomorrow.

Update: We got food. It looked like this. I wish I hadn’t looked at the label.