New Zealand Day 10 11th Aug 2013

We had a bit of a lie in before tiding up the apartment and packing our bags. To be honest I was a bit concerned if they were all going to fit in the car as it was only a little one. But they did. Just.

We had the idea of taking the kids ice skating in the morning, but an ice hockey tournament on the ice soon put a stop to that. 

So we headed up to the Gondola car park and played mini golf instead. Complete with beanies and thermals. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly popular. The motley crew playing for Kiwi Sheep Stations. :)

Worm point of view

The kids stripped themselves of the thermal leggings and tops while in the loo there as we wouldn't need them on the plane flight. I took my leggings off and forgot all about my long sleeved top and singlet. That would bite me later on in the day. Its funny how you get used to the feel of things. When the leggings came off it felt kind of naughty to feel bare skin against the jeans.

We headed to Frankton (satellite city to Queenstown) and not far from the airport, for an early lunch at the Frankton Arms Alehouse. This was the closest thing we could find as a pub in our entire trip. And we had our last ice cream at the airport. Their flavours are just amazing, so much richer and just more yum than ours. And bigger portions too.

Customs and Immigration were all cleared without hassle and with surprising humour. And finally we saw our first rain in all our trip. Just a slight misting as we walked out to our plane. 

We settled into our seats and the kids watched their movies. I watched the Great Gatsby but didn’t quite finish it before we landed. L  Left it on cliff hanger. Doh.

The sun was setting as we came into Sydney 2 and a half hours later. 

And I was overheating. I didn't cope well coming from 2 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees. This is when forgetting to remove the thermal top and singlet bit me. As soon as we were in the terminal I bolted to the loo to strip. Phewwwww.

We cleared Customs in Sydney after getting Sean’s and Kym’s passports reconfigured as we had been having issues with them all the way through. Nothing major it seems but they both failed one of the several security tests. All fixed now. Again all with good humour. With luggage now cleared we popped them onto the carousel and off they went to the other terminal and to our aircraft. As easy as that.

We caught the shuttle bus from the International Terminal to Domestic Terminal 2. I gather it’s dedicated to Qantas as there were no other service desks, advertising or aircraft other than theirs.

We only had about a 20 minute wait before we were called to board. And dang it all, I totally forgot about Krispy Cremes. L 

By now the sun had set and all we saw was a sea of red flying kangaroos.

Sean and I were lucky enough to score just ourselves in our row of three seats. I had a quick look and it seemed every other seat on the plane had been filled. We spotted the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the night scape of Sydney which is something I really hoped one of the kids would be able to see. And the reason why I especially booked window seats for them leaving Sydney

As soon as the seatbelt sign was off, I had Sean with a pillow and blanket and stretched out over the two seats to sleep. He was totally stuffed and the three hour time difference was a bit tricky for him. 

While he slept through the flight I had the laptop out working through as many images as I could in the 2 hour time frame.  I woke him after we landed and carried him off the plane while Kym took care of the laptop and camera bag. He wanted to walk after we got inside and he was like a dead man walking according to David who picked us up.

Side note: there were 8 coppers who met our plane and were checking out the passengers coming into the terminal. They had a few over to one side and questioning them. As Kym and I were about the last ones off, the coppers started looking confused and asking the airline staff ‘is that it?’ Then they seem to rush down to the luggage carousel while others were outside seeing who was leaving the terminal. They still looked perplexed and confused. I've no clue for whom or why they were questioning passengers. I don’t recall any ruckus on the flight so I don’t think that's it.

Anyway… we stayed with Kym’ sister and partner at their place for the night. They are expecting their first child in 6 weeks so it was so wonderful to see her with the bump. They have what they have nicknamed  ‘The Mental Health Room’ which is a lined garage shed and made into an outer office and social area. And it’s also the guest room as all the lounges roll out to beds. Complete with slow combustion fire. The kids pretty much went straight to bed as it would have been 11pm NZ time. We weren't that far behind them.