The Long Journey Home

Pyjama Boy and an A380

We have made it back home and for once the sun is shining, making our return less depressing than usual.
It was a bit of a long slog - 37.5 hours from door to door.  Nothing remarkable happened, Tom was pretty well behaved - it's no fun being cooped up in a aeroplane for 22 hours when you are 4.

Anyway,  we left Chinchilla at 10.30am on Saturday morning - Martin drove us back to Brisbane - this time with Vanessa and Mia.  We felt really bad for Mia not a great Saturday being stuck in a car for 10 plus hours just to drop your guests off at the airport.  However, she didn't seem to mind too much, she's a bookworm, so for her it was a chance to read, read, read without interruption.

A380

Once we got past Toowoomba we stopped for lunch.  Now one very noticeable change with Australia since 2001 is the fact that it is almost overrun by what we called 'The Holy Trinity plus 1' - ie MacDonalds, KFC, Subway and Hungry Jacks (known here as Burger King).  It is quite disappointing especially because if you go to an independent cafe or restaurant in Australia the food is generally of a very high quality.  Another noticeable change is the fact that Australians are definitely getting fatter - I certainly don't remember seeing so many obese Australians last time and I think the two can't be unrelated.  Anyhow, where we stopped there was a Hungry Jacks, KFC and Subway - as we had declared a moratorium on them all early on in the holiday we opted for the only other choice - a cafe which really wasn't too bad.  We had a lasagna each which came with a huge fresh salad which was very welcome as we knew it would be airline food for the next however many dinners.

Pyjama and Headphone boy

Martin then continued the drive into Brisbane and dropped us off at the Transit Centre where we managed to stuff most of our luggage into a locker and then we walked into Brisbane to do some souvenir shopping - there were no souvenirs to be seen in and around Chinchilla.  In fact we didn't see any during our road trip either so we have come home with very little to show for our time there.  We picked up a couple of things for neighbours etc and then got the train to Brisbane airport where we checked in and then had a very average dinner in a pub there (OK - not all food is great, but most of it was).

We got our seats on the 777 and headed off on our 14 hour trip to Dubai.  We really felt the difference not being in the A380, the 777 felt cramped and was much noisier.  It was also completely full.  Tom however, managed to sleep a good 6 hours (lucky thing) and he even managed to sit through most of Monsters Inc which was good.  We landed in Dubai on time, Matt bought his bottle of Whisky and then we got our seats on the A380 for the flight to Manchester.  We immediately settled in to the more spacious seats.  We had our second breakfast of the day and then Tom lay down for a sleep for a couple of hours - he was completely zonked as he closed his eyes about 2 seconds after lying down and was gently snoring after about 10 seconds.  Lucky thing.  We didn't do as well - we tried but failed.

We finally touched down on time at 11.30 and then had to wait an age for our bags (the down side of travelling on a big plane), got the bus back to the car.  We realised we were back in the UK almost immediately - with a bump...a big bump!  

+ The escalators between the gate and immigration weren't working.
+ The taps in 2 of the 3 basins in the gents had no water.
+ You have to pay for a trolley for your luggage with coins.  Who has local coins on immediate arrival to a country?  We did but (probably stupidly) refused out of principal.
+ I went to a shop to get some drinks and chocolate for the way home, had to wait ages whilst the one guy behind the counter worked at 0.1 miles an hour and didn't offer any pleasantries, whilst his colleague watched the queue build up without thinking that maybe he should help behind the counter too.
+ We had to wait ages for the car park bus (apparently an empty one sailed past the bus stop just before we got there and didn't stop).  When it did finally arrive it couldn't get to us as another coach had pulled up to the gates for the road and couldn't open them!

It's not great is it.  We realised immediately just how good the service industry is in Australia, or maybe just how bad it is here.

Anyway, we drove home without incident and without fighting jet lag too much.  Got back to a very warm house.  Tom fell asleep in the car - it took quite a lot to wake him again.  He was then very grumpy but a bath helped cheer him up.  I made us all some macaroni cheese for dinner (how good am I?) and then Tom went thankfully to bed at 6.30 and we gladly followed at 8.30.

Anyway it was a wonderful holiday, I could quite happily have stayed longer and done the road trip all the way up to Cairns and probably beyond.  I think I would be able to twist Matt's arm to go again - maybe in another 13 years time - I'm looking forward to it already.