8 - Australia

     Our last night in Australia was upon us. Barbara spent hours clearing our stuff out of the car and packing. Our bags were really bulging now! The next day, we drove into Sydney, somewhat straight to the airport. We checked in at the Ibis Motel. Barb had to dial 36 numbers to do it, but she managed to check us in at a motel in Auckland, New Zealand, for the next night. I could just never have figured that all out. But for her, I would probably still be stranded on some sheep station, marking lambs for a living. As I have said before, Barb will just not let any task she starts defeat her.

     The next morning, October 15, we took the shuttle to the airport. We were both determined to go through this airport thing without a panic attack. We were world travelers now, time to act like it. Always, it seems, some little thing happens to us, like losing a passport, or a ticket, and it just sets us off!

     In the air, we circled out around Sydney, both with tears in our eyes. What a beautiful, wonderful place Australia is! We could just live there. We had hoped to travel half of it in four weeks, but only saw a small fraction of that. Oh well, just a good reason to come back some day, if our bonus miles would just build up before our time, or my back, gives out. And, there's still a lot of this world we have not seen yet. Neither of us have ever been able to figure out why so many rich people just sit at home so much.

     It took only two hours and forty minutes to fly to Auckland, New Zealand. When we arrived and picked up our baggage, we went to look about rental car possibilities. We were studying the board when we were approached by a well dressed, fast-talking man. He explained that he owned rental cars; he had an excess on the other (south) island, and would give us a really good deal if we would fly to Christ Church, pick one up from his brother there, tour with it, and return it to Auckland. Even factoring in the domestic flight cost,  we would still have only one ferry crossing fee, and his price was impressive. His brother would pick us up at Christ Church, put us up in his motel, then send us on our way with a hire car. We agreed, and he quickly (too quickly, it turned out,) booked us a flight for Sunday morning, leaving us a day to see Auckland.

      Auckland was impressive. We toured by bus. The  sky tower was fun. As we worked our way up, Barb decided not to go to the top. She was not feeling real well, and standing on the glass floor, and looking down through it hundreds of feet of empty air to the ground was not appealing to her.

     When I reached the top, a tourist, again a young Chinese, was being buckled into a harness, lifted up by a crane, swung out over the edge. He was then dropped, hundreds of feet, then finally slowed down as he reached street level. I passed on this, our budget did not allow it. Or my fear factor.

      We went to the Maori Museum. The Maoris, of Indonesian descent, were the original New Zealanders. They are a large, very husky people, extremely strong. They were very athletic. We had noticed in Australia that football was left largely to Maoris, whites played soccer. We talked to two young Maori men while admiring their Grandfather's carving display. Each brother probably weighed  four hundred pounds. An extremely large proportion of Indonesian men wind up in the National Football League in America. Many people in that part of the world feel they will someday dominate the NFL. I tend to agree. These people are sometimes called Kiwis, along with the bird and the fruit.

     We arrived at the airport early on Sunday morning. When we checked our luggage, we got a shock. We had now accumulated so much stuff that there was an extra fee of $75 on this domestic flight.  If our common sense had just kicked in, we would have just stored most of it there. But no, that's just too easy. I preferred to carry all of it around with us all over New Zealand. When we picked up our tickets for the 10:00 AM flight, we got another shock. The flight was PM, not AM! It was a long, expensive bus ride back to Auckland, so we decided to kill the day wandering the airport. We would arrive at Christ Church at midnight. Oh, well, just go with the flow. I heard the announcer lady say “Auckland,” with her cute little accent, so many times that day, that I began to fall in love with her voice before we flew out. I didn't tell Barbara.

     When we arrived at Christ Church, it was the last flight of the night and the airport was closing down. Our ride was not there. We had called our hire car man about the time mix-up, and he had assured us that his brother would be there. We moved our stuff out onto the sidewalk.