The flight from Hong Kong to Australia was a very strange
one. For a start the plane was almost empty so as soon as we had taken off and
the fasten seatbelts sign was turned off I spread myself over the 4 middle
seats with my head on a pillow and slept.
The heat and humidity in Hong Kong had drained me and I was out for the
count in no time.
I have always been lucky enough to not be bothered by things
when I am sleeping so when I woke up and saw my mate looking worried I had not
got a clue what was going on. Apparently
there was a cyclone heading towards China and we were going through some
turbulent weather, Ian was into all of that type of stuff like Airplanes and
the engineering behind them and said that the plane must have dropped about
1000 feet during the turbulence but I never felt a thing.
We heard a few days later that the storm had hit Hong Kong
and there were pictures in the newspaper of a plane that had gone off the end
of the runway and into the harbour. I am glad we left before this happened as I
am sure I would not have slept on the plane with the memory of this incident in
my head.
Getting into Australia itself wasn’t without its issues, we
flew into Brisbane but then got an internal flight into Cairns so that we could
start in the North and make our way down the coast. On arriving in Cairns we were kept waiting
and eventually had all of our bags searched.
It turns out that we were not selected at random but simply because we
were the only non Australians that were planning on leaving the airport in
Cairns. Everyone else on the flight were
either nationals or had gone into transit so before we could enter the country
we had to open all of our bags and prove that we were not attempting to bring
any food in or introduce any foreign species of animal to their eco system. The
immigration officials were friendly enough and we had a good laugh with them so
it wasn’t really a major intrusion.
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