A four in the morning landing, hobble along to retrieve the bikes and the luggage. Time for quarantine and customs with the bikes, the boxes had to be opened to check for mud. AQIS staff polite and helpful as I’ve always found them, they even handed us tape to fix the boxes back up.
My sprained ankle
Outside to catch the shuttle bus into town, and the first major problem of the trip with carrying bikes on public transport. Typically, after four weeks of no hassles in three countries, there’s a problem here in Australia. The Skybus bus driver took one look at the boxes and declared that they wouldn’t fit and couldn’t go in his bus, then made a big song-and-dance of moving people from the front seats to the rear and folding seats up to make room. The luggage rack was only a third full, and there were a whole 16 people on his forty seater bus!
The bus timetable, posters and information booth all made no mention of the cost of the tickets — surely something that most customers are interested in. At $13 one way, I’m not surprised that they’re embarrassed to display it! A tram ticket to within one suburb of the airport costs around a quarter that, no wonder Sky-Bus and the taxis are resistant to the idea of a normal public transport link to the airport, that’s quite a lucrative racket they’re running.
Seven o’clock and we were home at last. A flurry of unpacking, then a day spent snoozing in bed, or endlessly filling and emptying the washing machine. Somewhere in there I managed to get to a doctor and was told that I’d sprained my ankle four days ago, to go home and rest it and to make an appointment with their physiotherapist — the receptionist interjected that this would “probably be sometime between two and three months from now,” as they were fully booked.
