… to Kirrily

Boarding our second leg flight overnight to Adelaide went smoothly. I was anxious to check for row 4, curiously missing from the previous flight from London and, lo, there it was. Our ex-London aircraft was an Airbus A350 with no row 4 but the Adelaide bound aircraft was an Airbus A330 complete with row 4. Superstitions go only so far it seems.

KL to Adelaide is a 7-hour flight, mas o menos, but after our initial in-flight meal, this time I failed to get any sleep. “Bother”, said Pooh, irritatedly. We touched down at 08:25 Adelaide time.

QANTA Lounge AdelaideImmigration was a breeze – being amongst the first off the plane there were no long queues for the machines – and our bags, though they made us wait and wonder, did turn up. They were re-checked for  the next leg and we made our way to lounge #3, the QANTAS lounge. Sadly the bar doesn’t open until midday, after we board the next plane. They do, however, have a good barista.

For those who don’t know (including to some extent ourselves), Australia has some weird time zoning. Adelaide is now 30 minutes behind Sydney but 30 minutes ahead of Brisbane, whose clocks do not change. Brisbane, Queensland [QLD], is where we are heading to begin our visit.

We are not the only ones heading for Queensland; Queensland is also where tropical hurricane Kirrily is heading. We’ve flown away from storm Isha in the UK and are heading for hurricane Kirrily. Brilliant. You couldn’t write it, could you? Current predictions expect Kirrily to make landfall at Townsville in Far North Queensland [FNQ]. That’s some way north of Brisbane but, even if predictions are accurate, we’re almost bound to get some overspill.

Our QANTASLink flight took off on time [midday] and we touched down safely under cloudy skies in Brisbane. There seemed to be few bags checked on the internal flight and ours turned up promptly in the domestic terminal. I wondered if we’d have to go to international to find an Avis desk but happiness reigned when I found one very near the baggage carousel. Happiness soared even higher when the helpful agent found us a car with a built-in satnav, taking the stress out of finding our hosts.

There are toll roads (quite expensive ones) in Brisbane and it’s controlled by ANPR. The agent set our credit card up to make the process automatic [and less painful – we won’t have a clue how much it’s costing].

30-minutes through some heavy Brisbane traffic got us “home” to a reviving cup of tea.

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Posted in 2024-01 Australia