Monday a day of travel with what looked like some impossible time intervals between flights did not encourage optimism in any way.
We arose at five forty five and we're ready to leave at seven ten, ten minutes behind schedule. The drive to Hobart airport was uneventful and Pam dropped us off , so that by seven thirty we were waiting in a queue at the Jet Star desk. Inside the airport the booking in for our flight was announced as ending in five minutes. In no time at all we were boarding and on our way to Sydney. We apparently had a five dollar voucher which purchased a cup and a half of coffee, two cups with an additional two dollars thrown in.
At Sydney we had to rush to retrieve our luggage and then find the terminal bus to take us from the domestic terminal to the international terminal. We found the bus stop with little difficulty and realised we had to purchase two six dollar tickets from a machine. The tour director fed a twenty dollar bill into the machine which gratefully digested it and returned neither tickets nor change.
As the bus had arrived the tour director decided to take it up with the bus driver who walked over to the machine and tried to retrieve our money. This proved impossible and he decided to take us on the bus without a ticket, probably a wise decision on his part looking at the look on the tour director's face.
In the International terminal we were faced with the airport shuffle again as we queued to get out of Australia and through immigration and security. The airport shuffle consists of joining a queue and then moving forward half a pace at a time, feeling great joy at moving a whole pace forward at any time. Eventually we got through with twenty minutes to spare, purchasing a bottle of scotch for Andy and then racing to the gate. Here we suddenly found that we a long distance from the gate and by the time we found it they were already boarding. One more we enjoyed the airport shuffle as we waited to board.
Our Air New Zealand flight to Auckland proved uneventful, our itinerary said there was no food service on this plane but this was wrong as we were given lunch, having already devoured two chocolate bars.
At Auckland we were once again forced into the airport shuffle as we collected our luggage and then had to get through bio security and immigration. Having got through this , we walked to the domestic terminal where we had thirty minutes to spare. The tour director raced us from one terminal to another and I was grateful we had the chance for a sit down.
At this point it was announced that the flight to Gisborne was delayed by thirty minutes so all we could do was sit and wait. The tour director was not amused.
Eventually forty five minutes late we boarded our last flight of the day and arrived in Gisborne to a family welcome at about eight fifteen. Rosemarie's brother and sister in law were there to meet us and whisked us home to a very pleasant buffet supper after which we collapsed into bed. All the worry and concern had been useless, all the flights had been met and we had arrived where we should have been albeit have a little late.