A Winter Break

[This is a sort of test post to check out the new travel laptop, Francine’s old one having blown its red channel. This is Windows 11 – YIKES!]

I miss our long winter breaks in Spain tremendously since we sold Casa. Our original plan this year was to try a winter trip travelling around Spain in our new motor home – the ferry to northern Spain was booked – but we changed our minds.

It’s been a long time since Francine saw her brother, who very sensibly lives in Australia, and, as a winter destination, that wouldn’t eat into our “90 days out of 180 days” Schengen limit imposed by bastard Brexit. So, the Spanish ferry has been shifted to September and we’re doing a month in Oz instead. I love Australia and its 347 species of odonata.

Here’s the plan.

Francine has a cousin (actually a 1st cousin once removed) in Brisbane so we begin with 5 days with them. I should get some dragonfly action there. Phase two is a Maui motor home trip taking 12 days to drive an inland route through the outback down to Melbourne; insect action here will probably be scant. The motor home will be a sister ship to good ol’ Busby in our 2017 New Zealand trip, so this one is bound to inherit the name. In Melbourne we swap to a car to make nuisances of ourselves with Francine’s brother for two weeks in Victoria, close to the New South Wales border.

We fly with Malaysian Airlines to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday 21st, on to Adelaide on Monday 22nd, then take an internal flight up to Brisbane on Tuesday 23rd.. We have four hours between each leg so I’m hoping we might actually make our connections. [On my 2022 trip to Oz, QANTAS contrived to get me to Sydney two hours late and I missed my Cairns connecting flight.]

We have a taxi booked for 16:00 tomorrow destined for Terminal 4.

Fingers crossed.

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Posted in 2024-01 Australia