The Temple of the Mighty Bague

A 4am start isn’t a natural thing. But we’re up, and the taxi to the airport is due in 45 minutes. I don’t feel like I’ve had any sleep at all. Gaaaaah!

Theres no time for tears - they ll come later when we look at pictures of our friends and family once the journey is over - we have had to be strong for the sake of the kids cos kids are very perceptive!.

Theres been quite a few moments when Ive had them but Ive had to push them down b/c I know that when they come they ll come in floods and I need to be strong at the moment.

We are almost at the end of the packing and we plan to spend all the day out on Monday having lunch and meeting up with old friends, coming home early evening and perhaps spending a couple of hours with one of my friends having a chat before retiring to bed - setting the alarm clock for the morning.

Honestly, this is a bumpy ride but we ll get there.

Still smiling.

Debbie

Oh God, make it end soon.

We’ve been packing for what seems like days. We have a baggage allowance of 20Kg each. There are five of us. That’s a tenth of a metric ton of luggage. No problem, right? Wrong - we seem to have twice that amount of rubbish kicking around. We’re filling case after case and the piles aren’t diminishing.

One big case holds 20kg. That’s fine. One small case can also hold 20kg of denser things - books, CDs, that kind of thing. The problem comes when you have a combination of case sizes - as I understand it, they don’t measure the whole lot and say “95 Kg, that’s fine”. If there’s five cases, one of them is 15Kg and the other is 35, you’ll be charged for the 15kg overlimit in the second case.

ARGH!

I hate packing. This is a well documented fact. It’s also why I’m sitting here writing about packing instead of actually doing it. So far, my morning has been spent dismantling Bionicle models after being nagged into photographing them from every conceivable angle to aid in their reconstitution. As if they’re going to have time to do it when they arrive!

We’re nervously weighing things. We have a reasonable baggage allowance of 20 x 5 kilograms, which should be plenty, but then we’re carrying more than the average tourist. Ten million bags of Bionicle for example.

Still - we have some nice giant suitcases. Luridly coloured, but hey - you can’t have everything.

Well, it’s been done. The flights are booked for the 31st of October, so we’re off to Oz. We’re spending the coming week doing all our pre-departure visiting, as well as fun things like setting up bank accounts and packing.

It’s all going to be a bit of an adventure really!