Some fool had booked our flight out of Auckland at the ungodly hour of 0650. This, of course, meant an even more ungodly hour of rising, Being the fool in question there was little sympathy in it for me, especially from our ‘volunteer’ driver. However we found we were not alone, as after arriving at the airport at 0430 with delusions of getting through quickly we found a mighty queue of other such madmen. Nevertheless we continued our plan, foregoing a coffee to fire through customs. Polly, her bag full of suspicious cylinders with a mysterious white powder contained within, ran through customs like a gazelle. Myself, with my sensible work shoes on, set off every metal detector in sight. Nevertheless, after some browsing of duty free and remarks about a group of merkin cheerleaders wearing the very epitome of ‘short shorts’ we arrived at the gate at our designated boarding time of 0555. And sat. And waiting. And twiddled our thumbs. At 0640, ten minutes before the plane was due to be in the air, they were kind enough to shout of the sardine lined departure lounge that we would be loading in 10 minutes. One hour later we hit the skies.
The less said about the flight the better. We were sitting in a group of American footballers and their sycophantic cheerleaders. Luckily we were saved the torment of sitting directly next to one by a kindly gentleman, who later turned out to be a space hog and a Mormon elder. Fortunately not too much was required to discourage his one attempt at conversation and we spent the rest of the flight trying to attract the attention of a flight attendant to get a drink. We failed.
This turned out to be rather unfortunate. We made up time in the flight only to loose it as the aircraft waited for a landing slot. When one did become available we found we, along with the passengers of 3 other planes, were to have our passports checked by four customs officers. Time to departure of our flight to Cairns: one hour.
35 minutes later we reach the front of the queue and with panic breaking our voices asked just how many people we’ll need to bribe to get our flight. She suggests we beg the people at customs to fast track us. Polly offers them some of her white powder and we’re through! Time to departure: 20 minutes.
Did we mention Brisbane has a separate national terminal? For most there’s a train running between the terminals. For us, a taxi with a grumpy, grumpy driver who bitches about waiting 45 minutes for a $5 fare. We don’t care as Qantas are paying. We reach the terminal with 5 minutes to spare and scurry to the check-in controller’s desk. She is answering phones and fending off customers every which way, but just as we give up hope another four of five people for Cairns turn up. Qantas opt to load our baggage, hold the flight and not have to deal with a grumpy Polly. Good choice. They did have to deal with a grumpy me however after they insist I remove my shoes to ensure I hadn’t anything in them but my feet. One sniff, however, and they bid us haste.
In a stunning change of fortune the flight to Cairns goes without a hitch. We arrive a mere 10 minutes later than we were scheduled to and walk out into a palm tree lined airport at a balmy 27 degrees. We are picked up, dropped at our hotel an hour before our earliest possible check-in time and have our bags stashed while we walk into town. And so we discover why people suggest Port Douglas might be a better option for those who don’t want to spend their time being sea sick – the beach.
Or perhaps we should say ‘the lack of a beach’. A meter of sand separates us from up to a kilometre of swamp. Some pelicans enjoy the mud but we take one look at the signs suggesting that jellyfish and crocodiles infest the swamp and decide to stay on terra firma. Conveniently there’s a lot of terra firma – about 1400m from our hotel to the centre of Cairns – which should stop just about anything going to our hips. And giving the number of ice-cream shops in Cairns that could be a good thing.
For those who aren’t into the idea of swimming with crocodiles there’s a public swimming pool they call the ‘lagoon’. It’s about a metre deep and surrounded by half naked teenagers trying to get melanoma. We opted to use the swimming pool at the hotel and conveniently found ourselves upgraded to a larger room right beside it. So we dived in, discovering somewhat inconveniently that the air-conditioning turned off when we weren’t in the room, before crawling into some clean clothes and headed out for our reef lecture.
Lecture is perhaps an inappropriate word. We found ourselves in a room adorned with corals, pickled snakes and cone shells, all of which were eclipsed by the pile of chocolate biscuits. So we grabbed some tea and watched for two hours as the presenter demonstrated devotion to his field. He was not content to show slides and quote statistics, instead literally throwing himself across the stage, miming the current fish and talking in a squeaky voice whenever he felt the audience might be drifting. Besides entertainment it became clear that he did know his field and has suspicions that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire may be just a little bit biased. And he had chocolate biscuits, although not for long.
Our evening’s show over we heading home, until Polly got peckish and demanded we stop for wedges. We purchased our wedges, were short changed and upon pointing this out we were begged by the cashier to accept free beverages to make up for his mistake. We settled for just eating the wedges and finally going home for a little sleep before ProDive picked us up at the ungodly hour of 0610.
