Flying South

It was time to say 'ta-ta' to Thala and set off airport-wards for our flight down to Melbourne and, as per for the forecast, cooler climes. A shame really, I think we were getting rather used to the heat, the cane toads (massive, they are, and they were everywhere around the hotel), the beautiful lorikeets, the endless Coral Sea vistas and the laid-back tropical atmosphere.

We'd spent our last full day in Port Douglas firmly ensconced at the hotel. A rest day is what we'd promised ourselves and a rest day is what we had. A late start, a light breakfast, then some quality time by the pool which we had entirely to ourselves for most of the day. Mrs V and I took it in turns to take Tizer in the pool, interspersed by catching up on a book, sipping on a cool beer and generally wondering why we hadn't booked to stay here for another week.

We also discovered, later that afternoon, that Thala has wireless (and free) internet access. I bring this up now as our one travelling companion I haven't had rise to mention much of yet is my trusty MacBook Pro, who I like to call Mac. And before you say anything, it took me all of 5 minutes to come up with that name.

Mac has been an essential piece of kit so far on this trip, allowing me to email hotels, check-in for flights, keep up (almost) with this blog and - thanks to its groovy little integral webcam - say 'hi' to Ma and Pa back home. As all of this has been dependent on wireless internet access, we've been quite fortunate so far as the hotels in Hong Kong and Sydney both had oodles of it, all for nowt. Thala, on the other hand, had a PC for guest use in the reception but nothing at all of the wireless variety - at least not according to the bumpf in the room. So, for the past four or five days we'd been pretty much incommunicado.

This particular lazy afternoon by the pool, I decided to boot old Mac up just to let him know he hadn't been forgotten when - hey presto! Bars and bars of lovely, free, wireless internet! Wish I'd known a bit sooner, mind. Then again, perhaps it was good to 'get-away-from-it-all' for a few days. Either way, we celebrated by giving Mum and Dad a tinkle. It was half 5ish in Queensland, so half 7ish in the morn back home. It being a Wednesday, my parents would probably be up and about, which they were. Tizer, as ever, was delighted to see them and tried to give the screen a hug, and I gave them a roaming, internet tour of Thala, such as the wireless connection would let me. One of the waitresses even came over to say 'Hello' in a delightfully thick Aussie accent which can only have added to the whole feel of the piece, so to speak.

We dined in the hotel that night, with a blissfully sleeping daughter by our side. Beautiful food, surroundings, wine - really couldn't fault it. We even managed a couple of after-dinner G & Ts and a chat with a pleasant English couple who'd got married at Thala the week before. Then to bed, ready for an early start the following day.

I was genuinely sad to be leaving Thala; it felt as if we'd just got into the pace of things in time to leave, which is always a shame. But the nature of our trip meant that it was time to move on, and another delightful Qantas Economy flight lay ahead of us. Oh happy day. Over three hours of it this time, which I really wasn't looking forward to. We'd tried to upgrade the night before, but we'd got such cheapy tickets that it was going to cost somewhere in the region of 900 quid, and even a inveterate Business Class Snob like me couldn't bring himself to hack that up for a relatively short flight.

But first, having driven south toward Cairns once again, we had to drop the hire-car off. And it looked like rain. Now, I know from experience that different countries and even different car hire firms have different rules when dropping your car off. For Avis, at Cairns airport, the system seems to involve a woman in very comfortable shoes ("What is a protective dyke? Is it a woman in comfortable shoes saying 'Don't go near there'!") accosting you as soon as you step out of the car. She looked to me as if she'd been living in the outback for the previous three weeks or so - wide brimmed ranger's hat, multi-pocketed shorts for keeping knives in, wrap-around mirror shades, and she rather looked like she could do with a shave. Probably smoked roll-ups and had a sexually non-descript friend call Val. Anyway, without a 'Hi', 'Hello' or 'How are ya?' she pointed accusingly at a scratch on the rear bumper of the car and told us, abruptly, "That wasn't there when you picked it up".

"Well of course it was", I replied, hoping it was true, whilst attempting to man-handle a two year old, a push-chair, three cases and hand luggage from the car in tropical heat, at the same time as trying to spy a luggage trolley. And all the while watching the ever blackening sky which appeared hell bent on providing us with an utter soaking at any time.

"Paperwork" she/he barked.

"I'm sorry?" I enquired.

"The paperwork you were given when you picked up the car".

"Yes. Fine. OK. Can we just get our luggage sorted out?” I replied, feeling my proverbial rag starting to slip through my fingers.

"Ah, yeah. Rain", she said, as the heavens opened. She strode manfully to the dry refuge of her shack, no doubt the interior walls of which were adorned with pictures of monster trucks and K D Lang, whilst we got piss-wet through. Too late, we decided to shelter back in the car, as it really was coming down now as if someone had turned a hose on. Wet and hot. Well, to misquote the great 'Good Morning Vietnam' one more time, 'That's nice if you're with a lady, but ain't no good if you're in the jungle'. And it's not that great if you're stuck in a rental car, with your luggage getting drenched outside, a threatening lesbian rolling cigarettes in her hut mere metres away and a flight to catch in less than an hour.

The rain stopped, as they say, as quickly as it began, and we stepped - pretty much soaked - back out of the car to finish putting our luggage onto the trolley. Our hairy legged tormentor ventured out of her hut and was once more coming back to harangue us. We'd found the paperwork- which was, by now, in danger of turning into papier-mâché - and thrust it at her, explaining that it clearly showed (thank god!) that the scratch on the bumper was there when we collected the car. Reluctantly, and with the kind of bad grace you'd expect from a six year old boy who's been told to stop tying fireworks to the cat's tail, she printed us a receipt and was on her way.

Matters weren't helped by the unwelcome sight of a long queue for check-in snaking towards us as we squelched into the terminal. And we only had about 15 minutes before our flight closed. If anything, the time spent in the queue allowed us to dry off quite nicely (you're never wet for long in the tropics) and once we checked-in we were informed that there was no rush anyway as our flight was delayed by an hour and a half.

The departure hall was the kind of hell that first made me start saving my pocket money very hard indeed so that I could avoid it completely and use the Executive Lounge instead. Screaming kids, bored looking teenagers plugged into their iPods, adults in ill fitting track suits stuffing their faces with overpriced airport sandwiches showing scant regard for the very real possiblilty of contracting bochelism prior to boarding their upcoming flight.

A recovering alcoholic in a Santa suit was milling around giving sticky sweets to the children. Generously assuming he was employed in some way by the airport, I allowed a rather dumb-struck Tizer to accept one, but then confiscated it as soon as Old Soak Santa had stumbled away. Tizer wasn’t all that bothered either, which says something.

I'd barely had time to spill a cup of steaming hot coffee over my foot and eat half a stale muffin before our flight was mercifully called. But then, of course, this was Qantas Economy, so it wasn't going to be a great deal better once we were on the plane. And it wasn't.

Our seats were about mid-way down the plane and - as Qantas don't employ anything as common-sense as a priority boarding system for those travelling with small children - we squeezed our way uncomfortably through the cabin carrying three lots of hand luggage and a wriggling toddler. Not an easy task. We managed to prise ourselves into our seats and settled in for the long haul. I know, three hours and a half hours isn't really long haul, but in economy it certainly feels like it. I hate to keep banging on about this, but it was pretty awful.

Tizer was well behaved throughout, but then she usually is, bless 'er. We stuck a DVD on the portable player for her and she was happy enough with that. The food was terrible; almost inedible, to be honest. It was some sort of curry. One of the cabin crew was billing it as a vegetable jalfrezi, whilst another was introducing it as a chicken korma and I can assure you - not a word of a lie - they were exactly the same meal. It had a label on the foil lid that said 'Curry' so, at the very least, you've got to give the crew 10 out of 10 for imagination. I dipped at the sauce with a piece of bread, then hungrily devoured the chocolate biscuit that came with it instead.

We landed at a very soggy looking Melbourne, more-or-less on time, to be told that we were exceptionally lucky to be doing so. A thunder storm had passed through earlier that afternoon and had completely closed the airport, shutting most of the electrics down. They'd been re-directing flights to Sydney, apparently, and had only re-opened just in time for us to land.

We decamped from the plane, relishing the sensation of blood flowing back to our feet again, and headed for baggage retrieval. We'd booked a car to collect us a couple of days before and were glad to see the driver waiting for us with our names on his little sign. Then we waited for the baggage conveyor to start. The airport may have re-opened but, clearly, no one had told the bright and industrious gentlemen who work in baggage handling. It was almost an hour before all of our luggage came off, and by the time we headed for our waiting car I worked out we'd been on the move for nearly 7 hours.

We were shattered, and matters weren't helped by the sight of the car that awaited us. What we'd booked was an 'executive' SUV so that we'd have lots of room for our luggage. What we got was an off-white stretch limo with beige velour seats, the likes of which you might expect to see in a bad 70s porn movie. The real down side was that whilst there was plenty of room to do whatever it is people do in these dreadful stretched monstrosities, there wasn't all that much space for things like suitcases or push-chairs. The driver - who went by the name of Dieter, looked about 75 years old and may or may not have been a Nazi war criminal - manfully managed to get the push-chair wedged into the front seat. He also completed a task equal to anything they ever set on the Krypton Factor by somehow fitting our luggage into the boot, but only after five or six aborted attempts and what looked to me like a minor stroke.

An hour later and we were pulling outside the Westin Melbourne; Dieter leapt from the car with the sprightliness of a man half his age and transferred all of our luggage to one of those hotel trolley things (I'm sure there's a more concise term for them, but that's the best I can come up with for now). We tipped him accordingly, of course. It wasn't his fault we'd had to show up at one of Melbourne's finest hotels in a Porn Limo.

The Westin, from where I'm now typing this blog, is a very pleasant hotel. I'm in the bar (of course) enjoying a Peroni and waiting for Mrs V to settle Tizer with the babysitter we've booked for this eve. We've got a smashing room, a 'Westin Studio', which is a great size and has a massive bathroom. One thing I have noticed is the overuse of 'Westin' on this property. The studio is a 'Westin' as is the bed. The bathroom is no normal bathroom, oh no. It's a Westin Spa Bathroom. We have Westin Towels in there, along with two Westin Robes. You can order a Westin Burger from room service. Tizer, on arrival at the hotel, received a Westin Kids Club Pack. Still, as I say, it's a very nice hotel.

Melbourne's a lovely city too. Bloody cold, mind. It was about 16 digress today and it peed it down most of the afternoon. Quite a shock to the system after the sultry climes of Port Douglas. There's a lot of charm to the place though, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere in Northern Europe rather than a city of such a southerly latitude. Trams pass up and down the tree-lined avenues past Victorian facades and street side coffee shops. There are up-market restaurants and fancy looking fashion stores all over the place and it feels strangely like 'home', an image that's probably helped by the clouds, rain and rather chilly breeze that led us to quit our day's sight-seeing early today and take refuge in the hotel bar.

One thing that must be mentioned, however, are the flies. They are - to put none too fine a point upon it - bloody annoying. If anything, that's the bonus of the rain, as they only seem to come out when it stops. But, chirst, they are persistent little buggers and they don't take no for an answer, seemingly hell-bent on landing actually inside your mouth. Wave your hands around your head as much as you like, it won't put them off. They say you get used to them after a while, but Mrs V seems a long way from that...

We started our day with some very sad news. We'd spied a little coffee place in the square in front of the hotel so grabbed a table there for a spot of breakfast. Then we got a text from home informing us that Bill, a good friend and neighbour of ours, had died. We knew he'd been very poorly, but he was a rather private gentleman and I don't think many people, us included, realised just how ill he was. We've been neighbours for 13 years and it was a heck of a blow finding out so far from home.

He was only in his early 60s, a former army-man who served with the Coldstream Guards (they're the ones in the bearskins outside Buckingham Palace). He and his wife moved to our village around the same time I bought our current house. We used to go round to each others gaffs after the pub on a weekend to play a particularly bastardised game of poker to which only Bill seemed to know the rules, a fact that was usually reflected by the way in which he'd taken most of our money off us by the time we staggered homeward in the early hours. He'll be sadly missed, the old bugger.

Nonetheless, we're on the other side of the planet and, short of sending a couple of conciliatory text messages, there's little more we can do. We took Tizer's photo with the very jolly Santa in the square, then walked the few blocks down to the 55 storey Rialto Tower, which has an observation deck offering what I imagine are pretty stunning views when it's not raining.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a sitter tonight, so we're heading out to a little Italian place we've found a couple of blocks away. Piles of fresh pasta and a couple of bottles of red are the order of the day, I think. And we'll be raising a glass or three in memory of Bill. "Pame!" Bill, as you (and the Greeks) used to say...