Back to the Future

Thirty hours, 9000 miles, and a day lost across the International Date Line, we have arrived in Cairns on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia.

The flight from Phoenix to San Francisco was routine – which meant a flight delay of 45 minutes. However, our route took us right over the wildfires burning north of LA and we got a good view of the wall of endless flames glowing at night.

Just before we left Sky Harbor, Lara received an email from her boss suggesting that there was room in the flight budget for us to upgrade to Business Class for the flight to Sydney. The usually tight fisted, fiscally conservative Lara had the credit card out and had us moved to Seats 6C and 6D in the roomy Business class seating. The seats almost fully reclined, there were multiple movies running on our personal entertainment centers and little sundry bags with earplugs, eye masks, socks, etc… The meals came on china… you get the drift. This allowed us to curl up and sleep a fair number of the 14 hours. Honestly, the hours flew by and we were landing. Out the right side, we could see a magnificent coast line and the famous Sydney Opera House and Harbor.

Once we got to Sydney, we found out the hard way that Customs procedures are a bit different “Down Under.” In the US, you clear customs when you get to your first airport of entry. In Australia, you clear customs when you get to your final destination. It wasn’t until we went to Customer Service to tell them that our bags had apparently not arrived that we discovered this subtle, but important, tidbit of information.

We then got to go back through Customs and have our “Entry” rescinded so we could go through a different line. As it was, we barely ended up making our flight. There was a fair amount of “Laurel and Hardy” maneuvers as we got in and out of numerous lines, and kept getting separated. This followed by a Customs person manually scribbling out our entry stamp in our passports. He then called ahead to hold the plane and pointed us in the right direction with a cheerful “No worries, Mates.”

While waiting in the wrong luggage line, we got to watch the Quarantine Beagle nab a nefarious Beef Jerky smuggler! Apparently, you cannot bring ANY food items into the country and they have the “Food Police” version of a drug sniffing dog that goes around sniffing baggage for food. These dogs are very cute in their little uniforms moving from bag to bag. He seemed to be having a good time sniffing and wagging his tail, moving from bag to bag until he found the contraband. Then he was all business going through his official “I have located an evil doer” routine. This involves sitting down with a real sense of purpose and staring hard at the bag with no tail wagging. He seemed quite pleased with himself at his role in protecting Australia from the introduction of unauthorized Beef Jerky.

The town of Cairns is just what I expected it would look like: tropical coast line on a massive island. The airport was small, about the size of the Tucson airport. The cab driver wore a uniform and was very chatty. It is warm and sunny today. We tried desperately to avoid the thought of napping so we wandered around looking at the boats and taking in the relaxed atmosphere. At lunch, we talked to some locals and found out that it is NOT customary to tip the wait staff. Apparently, the government requires them to be paid “a wage” so tipping is not necessary. Quoting our new friend, “you just sign it and off with you then.” It felt distinctly strange (and miserly) to put a $0 under the tip. We couldn’t help but skulk away quickly…

While walking the waterfront, we were surprised to find that Scottsdale Arizona is an OFFICIAL SISTER CITY to Cairns. Lara is convinced that introducing ourselves as ambassadors will get us a discount somewhere…. Jim is planning on hiding when she makes this attempt.

Australian Head Scratcher of the Day: While running through the Sydney Airport we kept seeing signs to the “Tourist Rebate Scheme.” We finally figured out that this had something to do with sales tax rebates but thought it indicative that only in a nation originally populated by criminals would this be called a “scheme!”