Donations closing Saturday...

Raising money for Pregnancy Loss Australia - please donate through Everyday Hero

Belated thanks to In2 Solutions, Chris and Lauren. And timely thanks to the Sybiz crew and Candy who I met this morning at a Commonwealth Bank SME Forum. We are now at $6,590 would you believe?

PLA have their annual memorial walk-a-thon on Sunday morning and I am going to head on down to say g'day.

I'm going to close off the Everyday Hero page on Saturday night so that I can let PLA know the final tally on Sunday morning.

I haven't really reflected on the mission as yet and my city by city blog posts were a little pre-fabricated as I have mentioned previously. So here's a brief run down of the experience...

We headed to Darwin on the Saturday morning (rather than Sunday) to increase the chances of being better rested for the mission. That was a mistake. A night club in very close proximity to the hotel made for an interrupted night's sleep on the Saturday. We probably would have been better staying at home! I should clarify that I'm not complaining about the club or the noise - not everyone is 40!

Then we had this misfortune of the morning WWII tour not happening (we've been refunded already). So we got up early for no good reason. We tried to sleep a bit on Sunday afternoon and maybe did a little but not a lot.

We got organised to head to the airport around midnight and checked out of our hotel. Darwin airport was pretty busy at that time of night. I had kept an eye on the on time performance of the in-bound flight and all was looking good. It got close to boarding time and the staff announced there would be a delay of around 10 minutes for catering issues! We ended up leaving 9 minutes late - Brisbane was one of our tightest connections so any delay was potentially threatening. However, we were 2 minutes early into Brisbane.

As I've also mentioned previously I wasn't overly familiar with Brisbane airport but was pretty confident I could find a breakfast beer with my name on it. Speaking of beer, this is an interesting documentary on the subject.

The downer was that I couldn't get a local beer in Brisbane.

We had a comfortable amount of time in Brisbane without having to rush too much.

Our next flight to Canberra was one of the few paid flights - most the flights we got with frequent flyer points. We used points to upgrade this one though as our original itinerary had a 30 minute stopover in Canberra and a change of airline back to Virgin. In some respects it was lucky that Virgin changed their schedule as we were 10 minutes late into Canberra so that would have left us with 20 minutes. In other words we would have been disembarking at the same time our next flight was departing. Hence the business class upgrade - one or two minutes earlier off the plane was essential.

I did manage to sample a local brew in Canberra.

It was economy class for the next couple flights and when I had booked the flights I was able to select exit row. Unfortunately there was a change in aircraft and on the mammoth 25 minute Canberra-Sydney flight we didn't have exit row.

We had a bit more time in Sydney than forecast so that was nice. Knowing the airport quite well there was no problem finding a place for a quick drink.

Then it was off to Melbourne and a surprise visit from my sister Jane and her other half Rob/Bob/Bobbie. They're both lawyers and spent a couple hours with us in the Qantas Club. I had to check to make sure they weren't on the clock! That would have been expensive. They bought me a Carlton Draught to ensure I had a local brew in Melbourne. Nice.

It was nice to have a decent amount of time in Melbourne to recharge (us and our phones).

Next stop was Adelaide - we'd upgraded this one to business as well to get an extra couple minutes at home base. We were met there by John, Toni & Eli as well as Grant, Shane and Matt. Alison rocked up too. As with all visitors we had at the airports they all generously donated as well!

It was a little funny having a chat at the gate and then having to re-focus on getting a beer and the other little rituals at the airport such as completing the blog post and updating photos. So we were having a nice chat over a drink and then we realised it was time to go so Jo and I finished our drinks and bid our visitors adieu.

So, Jo has just told me this post is too long and I should split it into two. At this stage we're 5 flights down so maybe she has a point... Stay tuned.