lord howe day 7

 Our last day. And the days have gone by so very quick, and we've done so much and yet so little. There's beaches I haven't been to and I haven't done any of the hill climbs, other than the top of the Cow Paddock on the way up to Malabar. My right knee blew up this morning after going up to the top fence of the Cow Paddock for dawn. And I backpacked a lightened version of camera kit with 2 lenses, filters, shutter release, spare battery, the tripod and a large golf umbrella.  You don't dare go out without the brolly as the weather is so wonderfully changeable.

This is this morning's images of sunrise from the top of the Cow Paddock.

L-R. Ned's Beach. Transit Hill. Mounts Lidgebird and Gower. The Lagoon. Dawson's Point. Old Settlement Beach.

Watching the very first ray of light hit the mountains to bring them to life was just beautiful. You just can't capture that in camera. You have to see it with real eyes to feel the emotion of it.

Just popping in. Complete with my purple beanie!!

By 9am we were all packed up, cleaned up and ready to check out. Lorhiti were kind enough to let us leave our bags in the room until the 1pm bus took us down to the airstrip.

I had to return the car by 9.30am and I was a bit ticked off, as I thought it was arranged that I would have use of it until our flight time. We would have been able to lock our bags in it and still get to one of the beaches to experience it. But no, apparently that was not the case, and as there was a mix up, he discounted the mileage cost off the rental fee. In the last 5 days on this little island that is only 13 kms long, I had racked up 155kms.  :O)  I've been out and about a fair bit.

Having no transport at my disposal meant I felt like I had my wings clipped. Bummer. Kym still had his bike and as we still had 4 hours till our flight, he headed back out to the golf course to play the front 9 holes. It's about an 8km round trip back to the bike rental place where he had to hand in the bike.

To pass the time constructively I sat in Humpty Mick's Cafe and processed shots from Tuesday's collection. I still haven't finished them but they are nearly done. I'll post them with that post in due course. Then I'll get Wednesday's, today's and Friday's done as soon as I can.

While sitting in there I caught up with the windsurfer fella and his wife (this post) and chatted away for a fair while. And then I bumped into Mel, a local photographer, and we yarned for a while as well.

Kym found me at Humpty Mick's after his golf and we had lunch there. It was about then we heard the flight was arriving about 40 mins late. We did have 1 hr and 15 mins time frame from the LHI to Sydney and then the connecting flight to Adelaide. With the LHI flight running that late, it made the window of time very small for Qantas to forward our backs from one flight to the next, so we elected to catch the later flight out of Sydney. We are staying in Adelaide tonight and it didn't really matter what time we arrived, so it didn't fuss us too much at all.

North End of The Lagoon. Malabar, Kim's Lookout and North Point. Old Settlement Beach. Roach Islands in the background.

LHI to Sydney was spent snoozing. ;op

I picked up some Krispy Creme's in Sydney for Kym's sisters that we would be seeing once we landed back in Adelaide and we made our way to Terminal 2 in plenty of time. And I was glad to see our bag being loaded aboard as well. The tripod bag was stuffed with some of my clothing from my suitcase to lighten it a bit, and even tho it was a second bag for me, it got through the new Qantas one bag only policy without issue. Hopefully it will be the same way in the morning for the homeward leg of our trip.

We had an uneventful flight to Adelaide and spent some time with Kym's sisters, Ian and Kym's nieces. The 2 girls have been learning violin and viola and put on a little concert for us. I'm impressed that they have picked a tricky instrument and having a good time with it.

the girls pictures have been posted with permission.

So now I'm in my jammies and blogging once more late at night and still without a pic to load into it. Check back over the last few posts soon as I'm not that far from finishing Tuesday's shots.

cheers.
t