november 29th

After a horribly early start, I made it to Melbourne airport, via my last tram ride to Spencer St station. I was rewarded for my early start with a view of the city skyline with the sunrise behind it that nearly made my heart bleed. Who would have thought that the combination of man-made objects and nature could be so unintentionally beautiful?

The check-in went smoothly, I even got a nice little box for all my coats that I am taking home to keep me warm (but which are quite unnecessary in Hawai’i. The transfer between domestic and international terminals at Sydney was via a little Ansett bus, and the driver gave us a guided tour of the planes we dodged as we trundled across the tarmac – this is a blah-blah 767 which just made it’s first flight yesterday, etc. The driver seemed to enjoy it anyway. Handily, there were road signs that said ‘Give Way to Planes’. As if you wouldn’t!

There was a small, mad rush to spend my last aussie dollars before they became worthless, and I finished up with a CD and two Peter Lik souvenir photo books. It could have been worse…

Once again, I was sat near the back of the plane (like I always am, for some reason), and got the pleasure of watching James Bond ‘zero, zero, sept’, or Dr No, with French subtitles. Sean Connery just didn’t sound the same. And then, after ten hours of flight over the almost empty Pacific Ocean, we sighted the Hawai’ian islands – with just a huge queue at customs and a huge queue to check in to the hostel before me. Then, sleep, glorious sleep.