Australia & New Zealand
So we got to the airport in Rome and checked in our bags and travelled “cattle class” to Singapore and then Melbourne. Our problems started when we collected our bags and found that Suse’s coat which she had wrapped round the outside of her bag under a polythene bag and secured with a belt were missing. Jo & Co who were waiting for us at arrivals were starting to get a bit panicky as we tried to “communicate” with the baggage handling people who thought it was funny. The coat was never seen again and luckily wasn’t needed for the next three weeks. The Birches weren’t arriving for another 3 hours, so John H. took us to Carrum and then heroically went back to the airport. We just about held on until they arrived and then crashed.
Next day, we teamed up with Suse’s relations for Emily’s official 40th birthday party and despite jet lag, bugs and injuries we managed to catch up and re-create the 3 wise monkeys photograph.
The rest of the week saw quite a bit of dog “walking”, a trip to Bentleigh to see Marion and Michael, an IRL meeting for Suse with a writing friend and an IRL meeting with someone who had been stuck in Whitehouse during the covid lockdown but had now resettled in Mount Martha. Meanwhile the rest of the party (bar Emily) attended a Melbourne Victory match at AAMI Park which was odd in that it started in 21st minute with Victory 1 – 0 down! (Previous fixture was abandoned because of crowd trouble)
On the Thursday, the Birches and ourselves left for a day in the City and met up with Jo and Johnny at an airport hotel for the flights to Auckland to collect the campervans.
