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Soooo, greetings from Australia's dryest state, where it is raining at the moment! Way to make us feel at home. Just had a shower, as I looked and smelt like I've been travelling for twenty plus hours!
Flights were pretty good, with the odd hiccup here and there. We had dinner before boarding the first leg at TGIs in the departures at Heathrow, where much to our amusement, we discovered that they will not let you use proper knives and instead give you metal blunt things which still manage to cut through chicken! It took them an extra 10 minutes to announce which gate we'd be departing from, in which time we found a pic n mix Celebrations machine and I asked a (presumably) Dutch lady to stop her two little brats staring and pointing at me. All good fun, and we got there in the end. The entertainment on the A380 is absolutely out of this world - films, music, TV programmes, console games and a link to camera on top of the plane so you can watch it as it's flying!
Flight went pretty smoothly although it was a bit bumpy over the Bay of Bengal. Stopover was in Singapore and despite the fact that we were getting back on the same plane and not entering the country, they still made us go through immigration! They also tried to not bring my chair up from the hold (they don't like doing that if it's checked all the way to somewhere else apparently) but I've found that mentioning the phrase 'spinal problems' has rather good results. Singapore ground staff also don't like leaving wheelchair users alone, even if they've got a companion with them, and the annoying little man would just not shut up about the ruddy World Cup. Mate, just because we're flying from football hooliganism's capital, doesn't mean we care, ok? This conference timed itself pretty well - it'll be just about over by the time we get back!
Singapore-Melbourne pretty uneventful, and I actually managed to sleep a bit during that leg. Delay unfortunately meant we were rushing a bit at Melbourne to make the Adelaide flight (again, they didn't want to bring the chair to the gate and 'spinal problems' didn't have the desired effect, but we did get a ride on one of the buggies to baggage reclaim). Had a chuckle with one of the ground staff over her claim that 11 degrees early on a winter morning was 'unbearable'.
Melbourne-Adelaide was relatively quick compared to the other two! Tourist Info at the airport sorted us with a map and where we were going, so we made it to the YHA in pretty much one piece. The buses here have at least 2 spots for wheelchairs, so exploring with Heather should be no problem. Just waiting for check in at 1pm now, so we can get into our room.
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