Well, after a very long day of travel (or should that more correctly be days of travel?), we arrived!

On Wednesday, we caught the 10:15 a.m. ferry from Duke Point, then a taxi to the airport. Getting through to the Departures area went fairly smoothly – and the attendant at West Jet even checked our luggage right through to Perth and gave us boarding passes for all our flights. We did learn, however, that once you fill out the US form at the US departure gate, you are considered to be in the US and bringing fruit in (and admitting it) will get you a quick visit to the food inspection desk. Luckily for me, the apple had a US sticker on it so it was good to go (and it didn’t even taste that good *s*). We got to the airport departures lounges just about the time that Karen and Les boarded their plane so we didn’t meet up with them in Vancouver.

It was a good flight to LA – and to our surprise, we didn’t need to claim our luggage to go through customs as we had already done that at Vancouver Airport. You do still need to exit the terminal to get to a different terminal but we had lots of time so it was not a big deal. (BTW – James, we waved at you when we passed over Seattle *s*). We walked around a bit and watched for Karen and Les, but they were flying from a different terminal and we didn’t catch up to them.

Our flight to Brisbane left at 11:50 p.m. Pacific Standard Time and we arrived in Brisbane at about 8 a.m. John and I both got some sleep but I found that trying to watch a movie was frustrating because the headphones didn’t want to stay on my ears so I watched the flight map while knitting. *g* Clearing customs was quick and easy and we rechecked our baggage. When we did that, we were given a new boarding pass for our flight to Perth which allowed us to get on the transit bus to the Domestic Terminal free of charge. Once we got to the domestic terminal, we didn’t want to sit down so we walked around and around. There wasn’t a lot of shops (and we weren’t really in the mood for shopping because we were so tired) but we did lots of looking. Oh – before I forget, Australia’s domestic policy towards liquids, aerosols, and gels is vastly different than Canada and the US. You can carry liquids on board so we took large bottles of water with us. The flight to Perth seemed the longest even though it was only 5 hours long but we were so tired.

We landed at Perth at 2:10 and, as arranged, collected our luggage and headed for the rental car lot to meet Karen and Les. We were a little surprised when we didn’t find them but then thought they might still have been in the terminal waiting for us and we missed them in the crowd. The mass of people had cleared out and we could easily see that Karen and Les were not there so we went to check on the status of their rental car and we told they hadn’t picked it up yet. Ok, time to panic! We knew they only had a short time frame to clear customs and get to their connecting flight so it seemed likely that they had missed the connection. But how to find out? We asked at the Qantas sales desk and they said they weren’t allowed to say anything about passengers. Then we went to the Qantas departures desk and asked if they could help – a very nice lady who was working with the baggage said that their flight from LA was delayed leaving so they probably couldn’t make the connection and would be on the next flight from Melbourne which would arrive at 4 p.m. There was no way of finding out though and it was 3:30 by this time, so we waited by the luggage carousels and hoped that we would see them coming down the hall. Our hopes were realized and we collected their luggage, rented the car (a small red Hyuyndai) and headed out of Perth with John driving.

Driving a right-hand drive vehicle was not quite as nerve-wracking this time (well for me – not sure about John as the driver). We headed out of town, didn’t get lo st but missed one turn because the directions we had were to turn right and an overpass had been built so you actually needed to turn off to the left. Did I mention that it was now rush hour traffic? With some basic maps, we managed to get over to the correct freeway and headed towards Dunsborough. It wasn’t a bad drive but we were all really tired and it seemed to take longer than we thought it would. When we got to Bunbury, we detoured into the town and looked for a grocery store. We found a Coles but it was closed – we all looked at each other and questioned whether it really was Friday night. Yes, it was but the late night opening night was Thursday! There was nothing open so we headed back out on the highway again and decided that we could manage in the morning even without groceries. By this time it was dark out – driving at night in an unfamiliar area in a car with right hand drive is an experience that none of us want to repeat. We finally found the condo and had 30 minutes to spare before the check in desk closed at 9 p.m.

The condo is nice – not quite what we’re used to but it will be comfortable. The bathroom(s) is/are strange – it’s divided into 2 rooms. One has a sink and toilet and the other has a sink and a tub. The second bedroom has 2 twin beds but the staff came and reconfigured them into a king. We have a small fridge, a convection microwave and a stovetop.

We checked in, sat and relaxed for a while and then headed for bed at about 10:30 Perth time. We all slept well and got up between 7 and 10 (and no, John was not the first one up this morning). Once we got up, it was time to check out the hot tub and pool as it had been too dark the night before. We had a nice soak and then came back to get ready to go to Dunsborough (about 15 minutes away) and get groceries. It always takes way longer to get groceries when all 4 of us are buying them! We got lots though and loaded the fridge up.

The rest of today was spent walking on the beach for John and I and sitting by the pool for Karen and Les. Tonight we are barbecuing pork chops for dinner. The weather is beautiful, the beach is wonderful, and the air smells fantastic and we are happy to be back in Aus!

More photos can be found on the sidebar under Australia – Dunsborough.

Hot Tub

Morning visitor at the hot tub