19th nervous breakdown

Tuesday, 28/08/2012 - 74 A.D. 

The 24 hour period started badly when, at our final campsite, we decided to do one last wash and included Tim’s sleep sheet which he’s been using inside the sleeping bag. This is a dark blue garment and, although he claimed to have washed it before, the colours from it ran riot throughout the wash. Obviously it was an accident, but consequently my white shirt and my white T-shirt have lots of blue splodges on them, as does Tim’s white underwear. We made vague noises about getting them bleached, but personally I’m not confident and I fear I may already have two items of clothing that won’t be returning home from this mission.

Next morning we got up slightly earlier than normal and gave The Chariot a bit of a gutting, cleaning in between the nooks and crannies and making her presentable. It wasn’t a long journey to the drop-off depot where we were told that we had achieved a whopping 5,201 kilometres since she’d been in our care. I think that’s around 3,000 miles, which is the equivalent of driving from Southport to Plymouth ten times. Hmmm…doesn’t seem as much when you think of it like that!

There were two French girls already in the office, prearping to rent exactly the same model camper van as us for the next three weeks. It was funny to watch the guy going through the same spiel with them that we’d been given four weeks ago in a rainy Auckland (it was another cracking day on the south island) and I felt that I would be qualified to show them the ropes if needs be. The man at the depot was satisfied that there were no extra cracks and scratches upon the bodywork and he believed us when we said we had never used the Porter Potty. Nope, not even once.

We got dropped off at the airport and sat back to watch everything run like clockwork, as we’d come to expect from New Zealand. Not wanting to take any local currency with us across the water, we frittered our last few dollars away on things we didn’t really need, such as a crossword puzzle book. We both got through security without making the alarm beep, but I was taken to one side for the full body swab (not that kind of swab!) while Tim just walked straight past. The flight took off on time and arrived in Sydney a little bit early, which is always good, though we knew we had a five hour wait before making our next flight up to Cairns.

[You to can travel to exotic locations like Wagga Wagga!]

The Domestic Terminal at Sydney airport is a long way from the International Terminal and you can get there by shuttle bus or train, so we tried t walk it, but realised that it just wasn’t an option. Instead we went to get the train and for that we were going to need funds. Approaching a cash machine, Tim took out his money, but when I tried on three occasions to retrieve three different amounts I was denied each time, despite the screen showing plenty of funds available. Now, about a week ago in NZ I’d tried to use a cash machine for a bit of extra dough, but the request was denied. I assumed it was just the cash machine playing up, so I continued on my merry way and I didn’t end up needing the extra notes anyway. 

Today, however, I did need notes, and I found a quiet spot to go online and check my status via internet banking – it wouldn’t let me on, saying there was a problem with my card. So, now I had to give good old Barclays a ring, for which I needed change, so I had to borrow some notes from Tim and buy the cheapest thing in the airport shop (chewing gum) to get some coins for the phone. Said phone swallowed my coins like a greedy metal-eating beast, but fortunately the guy at Barclays called me back on my mobile. After going through the usual security questions, he said that my card had been marked because of suspicious transactions abroad, the suspicious transactions being me trying to take out money in NZ and OZ. This was particularly frustrating because I had phoned up Barclays in plenty of time before leaving England to tell them exactly when I would be in New Zealand and I queried this with my friend on the phone. He ummed and ahhed for a little while before the phone suddenly cut out. Now, I have no reason to suspect that he did it deliberately, but he did not call me back again, even though he had my mobile number. Fortunately, when I went back to the cash machine I could at least get out some money, so the block had been taken off. However, I ain’t filled with too much confidence – it’s one thing for a balls-up like this to happen in a country like Oz with a sound infrastructure, but what if it happens in deepest Asia? Plus if I hadn’t been travelling with someone who I could borrow money from to use the phone I’d have been totally up the creek without a paddle. I’m not one to complain, but I immediately sat down and composed an email to Barclays to get a bit of reassurance for the future.

That whole saga took up about an hour of my life, but we still had a couple of hours to kill before flight time, so we surfed the net, played cards, and I posted the previous blog entry. Later, while sitting at our gate and waiting to be called, I thought I’d put on a couple of tunes to get me in the mood for spending a night in Cairns airport. Yep, we’re back to our old ways again – eating at Subway and sleeping in public places! We have booked three nights at a hostel, but there’s no 24 hour check-in, so it’s either stay at the airport until the bus comes or get a taxi into the city centre and walk round and round in circles until dawn. Only thing was, I couldn’t find my iPod, so assumed I had left it in my main luggage (now on the plane) when I was trying to sort out my debit card.

Don’t you just love internal flights when there’s hardly any people on them? There were so few people that I was able to go and sit on the row of three in front of Tim and stretch out for a little snoozey. Despite this luxury, there was a still a baby screaming at the top of its lungs – there always is – so the aeroplane sleep was just as broken as normal. 

We arrived in Cairns at about 22:30 and went to retrieve our luggage. I discovered that my IPod was not present in big bag and suddenly felt very annoyed with myself and a bit sick. I am still feeling annoyed with myself and a bit sick. I must have dropped it on the first plane that got us into Sydney as I was using it then and I hadn’t seen it since. Normally I am incredibly careful with this, checking where it is every few minutes. This is not quite as big a crisis as a busted laptop, but it’s not far off. That iPod has all my tunes on, plus a few TV shows, family films, and 100 selected piccies to remind me of back home. When I go for my What Carcass Walks it is the tunes on that Ipod that levels my mood and puts me in back in the happy, neutral space. Plus they cost a fair bit of money and I’d already replaced the hard drive on the bloody thing last year. BUGGER!!!! STOP TESTING ME, LIFE!!!!

[The unstaffed baggage claim desk.]

And so I sit here now in Cairns airport writing these words in the hope of some kind of cathartic effect. I should be dining on the second half of my foot long pizza-flavour sub, but the smell of it makes me want to hurl and I can’t seem to get the odour out of my nostrils. There is a baggage claim desk for Qantas here, but there won’t be a person back on it until 07:00, which is currently seven and a half hours away. If by some miracle my little iPod has been found and handed in to lost property at Sydney airport then I could claim it when I’m passing through on my way south, but I fear such miracles may be out of reach. We shall have to see. And so the order of priority is this:

Attempt sleep in airport terminal.

Speak to baggage claim.

Get bus to town and check-in.

Buy bleach and bleach clothes.

Throw out clothes after bleach doesn’t work.

Enjoy rest of time in Australia.

One hell of a 24 hour period!

[Tim unpacks his pyjamas on our comfy bed for the night.]