Friday 29th and Saturday 30th of September
More than just a little moisture in the air this morning, the skies are letting go big time with a torrential downpour that looks as if it is settling in for the day. By the time we have had breakfast though a look out the window tells us splashes of blue have pushed back the thick clouds. We take our time, we have nowhere to go but home, we have arranged a late checkout at 2.00pm. Packing done we adjourn to the courtyard lounge for a light lunch of Singapore pizza and a glass of wine, I am not even tempted to try the coffee. One look at the coffee menu makes me suspicious there are sixteen varieties on the menu ranging from a single shot Espresso or Macchiato at $6.00 a cup, to a Drip Pot Blue or Affogato for $14.00 a cup. I some how have the feeling I am not going to recognise any of them as actual coffee.
Our driver turns up precisely at 4.00pm our bags are loaded and we are on our way to the airport, first leg on the journey towards home. Changi airport now has 4 terminals with another opening soon, that’s an amazing amount of air traffic for one small island with a population of 5.5million. We arrive early as we had planned making progress through the checkin procedure very easy, then through an automated immigration that we made not so easy. I placed my passport under the scanner and stepped to my right to enter the gate that opened in front of me, problem was I should have stepped left, I am stuck inside the gate that now requires a thumb print to open, of course it doesn’t want to open. Meanwhile Amanda is berating me for going through the wrong gate. The female officer controlling the gates is having her own troubles as someone has just made the same mistake as me and she is busy trying extricate him from his gate. She leaves him to help me, I can’t go back and I can’t go forward. Eventually she calls some one to free me and I back out to try again, all works fine, but now Amanda’s gate doesn’t want to recognise her since I entered it. Eventually she makes her way through but it’s hilarious, a stern officer tells me to move on as I stand bent over in laughter waiting for her to emerge. For these things to work they need to be idiot proof, I think I proved that.
A little bit of duty free shopping and we make for the Qantas lounge to wait out our last hours in Singapore. Once in lounge we might as well be back in Australia, the Aussie accents hit our ears like sweet music.
Our flight leaves on time, no delays, our pilot advises a short downhill run only six hours and fifteen minutes, we have heard this story before on this trip, lots of circling at the incoming unprepared airport, less time to sleep. We do manage a little sleep during the flight and before we know it we are awake for breakfast and are landing in Melbourne. One advantage to landing early is a relatively quiet airport, passport control is electronic, but we decide to declare our Hungarian spices, just incase there are sniffer dogs around, not sure what effect paprika would have on the sensitive snout of a nosey hound. Plant based the paprika and saffron maybe but the customs official doesn’t blink an eye and sends us on our way quickly while the nothing to declare line is backed up. We now have to bag drop our cases, we are told we can do this just around the corner, yes it is just around the corn but one level up. Since we have loaded our cases on a trolley, we now have to unload them, to navigate an upward sloping moving walkway that doesn’t except trolleys this puts us back to pushing our bags (in our case four of them) up the moving walkway independently. Alternatively there are lifts hidden in a corridor several kilometres away. Next at the bag drop station another challenge we have to negotiate electronic bag weighing devices that scan your bags and send them off to be loaded onto our adelaide flight due to board at 8.00am. The bags pre tagged in Singapore all the way through to Adelaide, the tags have to be in just the right position for the scanners to read the baggage tag barcodes or failure! We have three successes and one failure, warning! warning! Will Robinson call the attendant. The nearby attendant can hear me muttering under my breath about FRED’s (F*king Ridiculous Electronic Devices) and quickly comes to our rescue, said bag has to be perfectly positioned like so! Magically the tag is read and we can head to the lounge for a now desperately needed tea and coffee.
The time is now 6.00am Saturday morning the 30th September, we have a two hour wait before we board our last flight and we are on our way once again to complete the clockwise circumnavigation of the globe. Landing ahead of time to a sunny but cool Adelaide. As we exit we see Adelaide Crows fans waiting in the departure lounges dressed in the team colours of blue, red and yellow for their flight to Melbourne to support their team, our team. Down the escalator in baggage collection our ride is waiting, a regular Adelaide hills driver, Terry makes a few cracks about the expanded luggage but it’s great to be back and within thirty five minutes we are walking through the home door. The sun is shining on our little part of the world, let’s hope the sun shines on the Crows in Melbourne today. Once home we drop our bags, start the car and drive down to Stirling to pickup a few essentials for our grand final lunch. On the way back home we stop off at the new house site, excited news has come through that the footings for the new house where laid yesterday. We arrive and yes there they are the floor plan to the new house neatly laid out in grey concrete, with pipes and cables sticking up in the appropriate places. We walk around taking it all in, feeling elated we drive back to the house to prepare for the game.
Unfortunately success for the Crows was not to be they were overwhelmed by a team that wanted to play footy their way, unable to counter that, the outcome was predictable. However the Adelaide Crows did win the home and away season and then in the final series won every game except the one that counted most. The dream over we say farewell to the 2017 season and come on, to the 2018th.
Well what a trip, we have flown halfway across the wide Pacific Ocean to those glorious sunny Hawaiian islands, where we attended luaus and snorkelled in warm blue waters. Then to complete the Pacific Ocean crossing to warm San Diego, not just the weather that was warm more the hospitality, then across the great land mass of North America to Philadelphia and the heat of a Pennsylvania summer for more incredible hospitality. Next we across the Atlantic to London, England, to an Indian summer, there exploring all things English, then into the fading warmth and cooling autumn we moved eastwards across the English Channel to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to join a River cruise were we wind our way by river boat through Germany and Austria and finally Hungary. From there flying north to Helsinki and again south east across Europe to Asia to the heat and humidity of Singapore. Eventually flying south to springtime Melbourne Australia and then back west again to Adelaide. The precious time with family in Hawaii, catching up with the Davis-Callaghan clan, the fun and laughter that filled the airwaves wherever we went. The marriage of son Troy to now daughter in law Heather, at the most beautifully stunning and incredible venue the island of Maui could provide, an amazing unforgettable highlight. A week with the host and hostess of California in San Diego, the most amazing food wine and company. Followed by three weeks in Holland Pennsylvania catching up with all the grand kids, being part of Troy and Heathers life for just a moment in time, precious indeed. Meeting so many wonderful people that make up Heathers family, and all their friends, at a luau they some how pulled off under trying circumstances. A week in England, catching up with my cousin Janet and husband Graham, revisiting my childhood, and showing Amanda my home town, spending time soaking it all up letting the memories flood back incredible. Then the most amazing journey on a floating palace through four countries along four rivers from fairy tale story villages to ancient cities. Tales of riches, of wars and devastation, Kings, Queens, princes and princesses, hope and joy. Then finally to an ever changing Singapore of high humidity, incredible architecture and home of high finance all in 90 amazing days. I hope you have enjoyed coming along for the ride with us (let me know if you did) as much as I have enjoyed living it and writing about it. The next journey for us involves building a new home, this will be just as exciting as we watch the house take shape, no doubt at times there will be highs and lows with times that maybe equally as perilous as flying and cruising on the high seas but ultimately rewarding like travel itself. Maybe I should blog it.