Day 5: Wallace > Coburg > MEL > BNE > Home (quarantine)

Does anybody know the collective noun for police officers? Flock? Legion? Force? Hmmm … well that’s not needed until the end of today’s post, so there’s plenty of time to solve that mystery.

In any case, today’s post is proudly brought to you by the Queensland Police Force.

Today started out a bit cooler than previous days. It was about 12 degrees and super foggy. Barb (my sister who lives in Melbourne, just in case you have started reading at the end of the trip and don’t have any of the context) had said that the Daylesford and Wallace countryside is “a bit English”, and I have to say that with the pea soup that surrounded us when we got up, it certainly felt that way.

Just as a quick refresher, this was yesterday …

… and this is today …

It had to happen eventually, and we had a good run of great weather so I’m not complaining.

Now I’m just going to put it right out there, but there are several things for which you should be very proud of me today.

The first reason that you should be proud of me is because I didn’t wake up during the night again last night. Yes, I know that is something that would bring great excitement if I was a 6 week old baby, but considering that I have a long history of waking at 3.00am and worrying about a million possible or impossible things that might – or might not – happen, sleeping through the night is a great achievement.

I will confess that it is partly due to being on holidays and not being stressed, and also partly due to some occasional pharmaceutical support. Exhaustion probably also contributed to last night’s sleep too.

In the interests of full disclosure, when I say that I didn’t wake last night I mean that I didn’t wake of my own accord. I was, however, woken.

MBW needed to get up in the middle of the night – I have no idea what time, but it was dark – and it was either her getting out of bed or getting back in that disrupted my sleep. In that state of semi-wake and semi-sleep, I lay there wondering if the fire was still burning and if I should get up and throw some more logs on it as I was instructed to do.

We have a saying in our house: “Don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.”

So I lay there wrestling with myself, wondering if I should ask MBW if she noticed the state of the fire, because the answer to that question could mean that I would need to get up, and I didn’t want to get up. So I didn’t ask and eventually fell back asleep.

Just to close out that story though – because I’d hate to have gone to the trouble of telling you all about my sleep and not telling you what happened to the fire – it was still glowing happily in the morning when we got up and it relit easily.

That was a rather lengthy and convoluted story now that I have re-read it, and I’m kinda sorry that I started it, but here is a picture of the fire glowing happily this morning just to complete the picture for you.

Just a quick digression from the story here … TOWS has the most beautiful vintage wooden floors and I couldn’t resist including a photo.

The second reason that you should be proud of me is because I have finally figured out the rocket.

Blinkers on the left, wipers on the right. It’s really not that hard!

Want to turn a corner? Left hand.

Want to wash the windscreen? Right hand.

Want to flash your headlights at some bogan that just cut you off? Left hand.

Want to turn on the wipers because it’s raining? Right hand.

Easy peasey, and I’m not really sure why I found it so difficult. A little bit of practice and you can achieve anything!

So we all got up this morning, had our ablutions and decided what remaining food in the refrigerator we were going to eat for breakfast, and what we were going to donate to my sister Barb – because I was pretty sure that trying to take a dozen eggs on the plane home would only end in tears.

I had toast – cooled down just the way I like it. MBW had cornflakes to use up some of the remaining milk, and Maddie had a toasted leftover chicken schnitzel, cheese, leftover bacon and BBQ sauce toastie because … actually I don’t know why. It certainly didn’t look like breakfast food to me, but what do I know?

I’ve never been a 19 year old girl so I have no idea what goes through her brain.

We gave TOWS a good clean, packed all our bags into the rocket, texted Trudi that we were leaving, set the GPS for Coburg, set the rocket to warp speed, and blasted off around 8.45am to head back to Melbourne.

Now you may recall that right back at the start of this post I talked about the fog. I think it was fog, but it was pretty heavy and thick and I needed to use the wipers – which I confidently turned on with my right hand 🙂

I’m trying to find a word to describe the trip from Wallace back to Melbourne, and the only word that keeps coming to mind is “scary”.

The fog just kept getting thicker and denser, and it was a bit hard to figure out where the fog ended and the rain started … but the wipers got a good workout all the way back to Coburg.

Barb and her family live in a pretty little street in Coburg, not far from the airport (15-20 minutes?) and with views of the city.

Other than the fog, it was an uneventful trip back and we got to Barb’s house at Coburg safely at around 10.15am, albeit it to an emerging crisis.

It turns out that the family cat was allowed out for some fresh air and foolishly went and climbed a tree, then couldn’t get back down again.

There it was, up in one of the highest and most fragile branches, crying sadly. As much as I don’t like cats, I confess I felt sorry for it.

Briefly.

There was some discussion about the appropriate course of action to get kitty back down from the tree, and I would have assumed that one simply called the fire brigade … although maybe that is only in movies.

At the time of writing this post I have absolutely no idea how that saga ended, and unless Barb posts a comment on this post, I guess that none of us will ever know! Bummer.

We had a final coffee at Barb’s house, repacked the rest of Maddie’s stuff into the rocket, set the GPS for Melbourne airport, and headed off for our final trip, with a small detour for more rocket fuel.

We dropped off the rocket at the Thrifty return area with 973km more on the speedometer than when we picked it up and headed into the airport, hoping that we had completed the appropriate forms to allow us to go back home to sunny Queensland.

Only a whole bunch of really boring and logistical stuff to report here: checked in for our flights, checked our baggage, went through the scanners, boarded the plane and headed for home.

We started the flight with a small child (2 years old?) sitting directly behind us screaming his lungs out, which is never a good sign for a happy trip, but fortunately they stuck a lollipop into his mouth and that kept him quiet.

The funniest thing that happened after we were seated was that a visually impaired lady with a white cane got on and took the window seat a few rows ahead of us. It seemed to me to be a waste of a good window seat although it could have been worse … she could have been the pilot!

It always amuses me on plane that people sit mute for the whole flight, completely ignoring everyone around them, but as soon as the plane starts to descend everyone suddenly wants to start sharing their life story with their neighbour. Have you noticed that?

Fortunately I already knew the life story of my neighbour (37 years of marriage will do that for you), so we just sat happily holding hands quietly 🙂

Now if you remember right back at the start of this post, I asked what the collective noun for police officers is?

When we got off the plane and into the arrivals area in Brisbane, there was a bevy (?) of police officers waiting to greet all of the newly arrived passengers from Melbourne to check their arrival status. Seriously, if you want to commit a major crime in Brisbane, just check the arrival time of any incoming flight from Melbourne or Sydney and you can be fairly safe in knowing that almost every able-bodied police officer is at the airport checking entry passes.

For some (like us) who had a valid entry pass and didn’t look suspicious in any way – unless you consider that a couple of older white people travelling with a 19yo black African girl is suspicious or unusual??? – the police checked one entry pass and asked “are you all travelling together?” – “yes officer” – and we were waved through with the instruction to collect our bags and head straight home.

For the poor unfortunate soul who was clearly unprepared for arrival into Queensland, the circular conversation between himself and the police officer (“no, that’s your boardING pass; I want to see your bordER pass”) was clearly not going to end well.

If he was truly unlucky, he may have even been chosen to be taken to a small room for a full body cavity search – but then I have a low tolerance for people that fail to plan ahead and believe that they deserve to be humiliated and punished. That’s why I always plan ahead.

And then there was the NZ dude who obviously had a border pass of some description so that he could come to Brisbane to work, but was clearly unaware of the need to home quarantine for 14 days. His sad face said it all … until he learned that not only would the police be checking that he had complied with home quarantine requirements, but that the carload of mates that were coming to pick him up at the airport would need to join him for 14 days … and he looked positively downcast.

Officer, put him and his mates down for the rectal probe too.

Anyhow, we collected our bags, and did the old car swap at the airport. Thanks to #1 son and #5 son for orchestrating the vehicle handover.

We (and I mean I) loaded up the bags, we all got into Elsie, and I turned on the blinker to indicate my intention to merge into the traffic – and the wipers came on!

Argh! I need to be retrained. Wipers on the LEFT, blinkers on the RIGHT! Why can’t we just have consistent rules here!!

Fortunately it was pouring rain so MBW probably just thinks I planned to turn the wipers on 🙂

Without any assistance from Google Maps, we drove ourselves home to start our 14 days in prison, with the only outings allowed to go and get 3 more COVID tests. Now that’s something to look forward to.

As some of you who have travelled with us before will know, the Project Manager in me has to do a “lessons learned” at the end of every trip, so these are the learnings from this trip:

• In Victoria it is hard to tell where heavy fog ends, and rain starts
• It doesn’t matter what you pack and wear in Victoria, at some point in your day you are likely to be disappointed with your choice
• It is impossible to dress appropriately for a trip from Melbourne to Brisbane and be suitably dressed for both ends of the journey – you will either be cold at one end and right at the other, or right at one end and hot at the other
• The rocket keeps telling me what to do, including a flashing sign that says “slow down you are going too fast”, and another warning sign that I never actually figured out what I did wrong to trigger it – and now I’ll NEVER know. It almost felt like being married 🙁
• Victorian freeways have a feeling just like driving on American interstates
• It seems that Dan Andrews is unlikely to ever win a popularity contest. Some people just plain don’t like him, and others seem to want quite specific harm to come to him. I’m sure he doesn’t deserve it
• Daylight saving messes with your head when it doesn’t get dark until about 9.00pm each night
• 19 year old girls spend a lot (A LOT) of time on their mobile phone
• Being around Daylesford west of Melbourne really is like being in the English countryside
• Constantly being asked to show your vaccination certificate is uncomfortable for everyone, so just play nice, have it ready and show it when you are asked
• Despite the obvious health benefits of eating peas and cooked carrots, I’m clearly never going to eat them at home any time into the future. (If you invite me for dinner, can we have peas and carrots please?)
• Nobody likes Turkish delight
• If toast is cooked too early before we actually sit down for breakfast, nobody is happy (well, I’m OK with it)
• 19 year old girls seem to be able to have 17 simultaneous WhatsApp conversations with people across the world and keep track of every single one (which frankly just blows my mind, because I have trouble following along with one conversation with someone in the same room)
• When you fly Jetstar, it is a safe bet that your boarding gate will be about as far as possible from the airport car park, with the maximum number of obstacles in the way of you getting there quickly and efficiently
• It doesn’t matter if you go on holidays and forget to pack a toothbrush, underwear or medications – you can learn to live without them. Don’t leave home without Google Maps!!!

I’d love to keep this blog going so that I can give you an update on home quarantine, who we eat first if we run out of food, future COVID tests, or whether Barb ever got kitty down out of the tree … but as none of you have come forward to donate any of your annual leave credits, sadly I need to go back to work 🙁

That’s about it for this trip. Thanks for following along.

… now I wonder what happened with that cat?

Ciao

#BringMaddieHome2021

#MaddieIsHome