Today I escape the Kiwi winter on a trip that will see me re-visiting some places that I enjoyed, plus a foray into a continent I have little experience in: Africa. But first up, it’s Australia. To be specific, Queensland’s winterless north.
I did my bag-drop at the airport nearly 4h before departure because we dropped our next-door-neighbour off for her flight which was nearly 2h before mine. The wait went quickly as I had lounge access courtesy of a credit card, meaning that I could do some admin on the computer and have lunch.
It was rare for me to fly Qantas; they had the better deal to Townsville via Brisbane. For the international leg to Brisbane, their hot meals were much bigger than the standard size seen on other airlines. But the crew weren’t that pleasant or switched on; one of them didn’t hand out arrival cards to a whole section because he assumed that we were all with a tour group transiting through Australia without entering.