Recovering in the Great Southern Land

I’ll never complain about travels that take thirty hours door-to-door again (well, I probably will, but not for a year or two at least). Our flights to Australia were booked fairly last minute, so I took a cheaper option rather than the shortest, and we were going to have an eight hour layover in LAX, followed by another seven hours in Melbourne airport before a regional flight. It was going to be about 41 hours door-to-door. But that was before the flight out of LAX broke down, and they had to wait for the part to be flown in the next day.

We’d been stuck in the same small part of LAX for about ten hours by the time they decided the flight wasn’t going to go. It had been an exciting ten hours of trying to keep a toddler entertained – as soon as you put him down he would go and stare at people who had touch screen phones or laptops (one girl was nice enough to let him play with her iPhone). Once he tried to steal someone’s pizza. He was also a big fan of the stand in the middle of the area that had lots of exciting food and toys at toddler height. He wasn’t a fan of sleeping there, as it was bright and noisy and there was too much going on – and when he did drop off there’d be a boarding announcement of something similar within a few minutes to wake him up again. So being herded off to hotels for the night was a bit of a relief, even if it took a lot of queueing and confusion to get there, and then get a room.

The next morning was spent eating buffet breakfast and then running around the Hilton (up the stairs, down the stairs, up the corridor, down the corridor). And finally, in the afternoon, clearing LAX security and actually getting on an aeroplane. Four hours at Auckland (it was supposed to be a two hour layover, but became four as the plane from LAX left two hours earlier than originally scheduled), and we were upgraded to Premium Economy (so much leg room!) for the flight to Melbourne. Then just a simple five hour drive, and 65 hours after leaving home, we were at the farm.

And then the toddler, followed shortly be me (and then the rest of the family) came down down with gastro.

We’ve now recovered, and are back to eating normal food (without having to throw it back up again). But after getting over gastro, the toddler has started teething. Molars coming through = supreme levels of crankiness, clinginess, and fear of random household objects (but not the dog, who he likes to chase, despite her uncertainty on the subject).

And so ends the first half of the visit.