Australia – Part 1

I’m back on the road well travelled again, this time I’m revisiting Australia for 6 weeks, finishing off with a week in Singapore, this time I’m travelling with my mate, Jim Lewars, who has never been to OZ before.

We had originally planned to make this trip earlier in the year when Australia reopened its borders, but when we went to make enquiries we were hit with a wall of negativity so decided to delay it until now.

When booking a trip of this size we normally organised it with help from the team at STA, but unfortunately, they went under during the first COVID lockdown, so the search was on to find a replacement, luckily I came across one close to home, Kenneth Macleod Travel just down the road in Giffnock fitted the bill, their agent, Michelle Gemmell, could not have done more for us, she took our preliminary plan and quickly came back to us with 3 options, one of which suited us perfectly, we certainly will be back to see her in the future.

The journey to, and passage through Glasgow airport went fairly well and we had some time to kill until our first flight to Dubai. Our flight on a Boeing 777 boarded on time but we were about 20 minutes late in taking off. The 7hour/4000 mile flight went by seamlessly, with a good selection of on board entertainment and some reasonable food, Jim was pleased that we had ‘real cutlery’. We arrived in Dubai in good time to get to the boarding gate for the next leg of our journey to Melbourne, with only an hour or so to wait.

The next leg was by far the longest, a 12 hour journey of 8000 miles, this time on an Airbus A380 double decker, which was spacious and the upper deck looked to be quite luxurious. this flight was mainly over the Indian ocean with a good part at night, I don’t think we slept much, it was more a case of sitting around uncomfortably with our eyes closed trying to sleep. The cabin crew were, as usual, very attentive keeping us going with a plentiful supply of food and drinks. I don’t know if Covid had much to do with it, but there wasn’t that many newly released movies this time so our books and iPads certainly came in handy.

Once safely through Immigration and customs we were met by Graeme & Briony and after a short drive at their home in Aspendale, we then spent the next couple of hours chatting and catching up before hitting the sack. All in all the whole of of our journey was pleasurable and trouble free.

[Return to Australia 2022]

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