Getting There Blues

One of the reasons people so seldom consider Australia is its remoteness. I’ve read that in the Fifties it took five weeks by boat to reach Oz from England, and the original First Fleet that brought the convicts and settlers was at sea for three months.

Nowadays its a fourteen hour flight from LAX, but for us coming from Savannah it was more like a full day’s journey (during the course of which we skipped a day). That being said, Australia is still feels pretty remote. We left Savannah on time at 404 aboard US Airways for Charlotte in a tiny plane with me and Chris opposite each other on the aisle, but there were a lot of empty seats so I got a window. Suffice to say, Charlotte looks remarkably like Savannah from the air.

We made Charlotte on schedule and had a couple of minutes to stroll through the airport to our connecting flight. The airport was nice, not as nice as Savannah, but they had free wireless internet in the terminal—the last I would see for quite some time. We got to our gate and boarded a larger plane that smelled like chicken noodle soup.

Now, here is where things start to suck. The flight to LA was long, about five hours, and we felt every minute of it. The lame movie they played was Mad Money (Heard of it? No? That’s right.) and US Airways wanted us to pay five buck for a headset to hear it. So I stuck to my Zen and caught up with House, Lost, and 30 Rock which I had loaded before leaving and Chris watched movies on my laptop (before the battery died). The staff was disinterested at best, and the worst we had on the way over. Then we reached LA.

First, I will start with the positive. The view of LA from the sky was gorgeous as we approached, with the sun setting on the horizon riming the world in a soft pink. The first glimpses of the city below looked like little splatters of iridescent paint, and then as it grew to enormity beneath us I was reminded of the opening to Blade Runner. Once we were on the ground the sense of awe vanished. LAX is, Chris and I agree, a horridly designed facility with the terminals spread all over the place and traffic running through it like an interstate. We had to leave the terminal we flew into and board a bus to carry us to the international terminal, which was under renovation (on the flight back we were delayed out of Melbourne and literally had to sprint through the traffic/terminal/crowds of Mexicans). The place was a mess with pipes hanging out of the ceiling, everything blocked off or covered in plastic and tape, and terrible lighting. We made the mistake of checking in before eating at a restaurant in the concourse, thinking there would be something once we got through. Well, there was—a grossly overpriced hotdog place and nothing else.

Our gate was packed and the one next to it, in the same big room, was filled with a gaggle of Filipinos outbound for home….so the place stunk. The PA system was, of course, broken so it was a gamble knowing when to que up. But we made it aboard onto one of the biggest planes I have ever seen and were seated dead center of a three row four seat configuration. We were crammed.

Things were good though, and Qantas is a fine airline. We had a free headset, pillow, blanket, sleeping mask, and socks (yes, for your feet) awaiting us in our seats. The chairs in front of us had built in screens and we were treated to a wonderful array of on demand entertainment that we could control from our seats. New movies, Australian classics, Aussie TV, documentaries, you name it. They even had a section where you could watch a graphic of the flight path complete with stats about speed and elevation as well as time ‘til arrival. They fed us dinner (Chris got it at least, I was passed out) and gave us snacks and breakfast. I popped a few Tylenol PM and slept like a baby most of the trip, so it actually felt shorter then the LA flight. It was dark the entire fourteen hours and somewhere in that darkness we passed over the 13^th of May without stopping to pay a visit.

So we arrived today the 14th in beautiful, sunny Brisbane, Queensland as the sun dawned and we passed through immigration to learn that our checked bags had been lost in LA and were not there to be picked up in Australia.

In the next post I will detail the baggage saga, which is not yet resolved, and elaborate on our check in to the Tin Billy backpackers (which is nice) and our morning visit to the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.