DAY 10, WED AUG 18 – I am leaving Sydney today heading North for Brisbane in hopes of warmer weather. It seemed like a normal day. I’d pack, get ready, and say bye to all the new friends I had made. My flight was supposed to leave at 15:10 or 4:10pm…or so I thought. Clearly 15:10 is 3pm NOT 4pm. I had scheduled the shuttle about 2 hours before departure since an hour was all that was needed to board a domestic flight. In Australia, shuttle buses wait or they go around picking up as many people before heading to the final destination of the airport. After an hour of driving around the city, I get to the airport…lugging 3 bags of heavy equipment and 2-3 seasons worth of clothing. I wished I had packed MUCH less, but being here for 2-3 seasons required such necessities. I’d say for a girl…that was exceptional. Especially considering the fact that half the weight was the laptop, camera, and all the things that go along with it like chargers, external drive, tripod, etc. I would have borrowed a cart to lug all these bags, but they charge for everything here and a cart was $4. No thanks! I slowly dragged my way up to the check-in desk, ready to unload the bulge of what seemed like a large boulder fastened to my back.
“Hi, I’m here to check in.”
What does the flight attendant say…”I’m sorry but your flight is closed.”
A blank and confused look on my face, “Ah hem, perdon a me!? WHAT!? My flight doesn’t leave until 4pm”, I replied.
“Well all flights require at least half an hour to board the flight, your flight was actually at 3:10pm.”
I looked at the clock, looked at my printed boarding pass and sure enough it was.
FIASCO is what came next! I asked if there was another flight that would depart later.
“Sorry, NOPE that one is closed. The next one is not until 6am. Oh and by the way it costs an extra $80 to change your flight now that you missed yours. Your other option is to wait on stand by on a flight that will depart at 6pm to the Gold Coast. You will have to catch a train or bus that will take you into Brisbane.”
Of course I would, because I had already booked a hostel right before leaving Sydney. GREAT! I called Stephany to see if there was a train that was scheduled to leave the Gold Coast around 8 o’clock. Before she could call back with a reply, I decided that it would be too late to figure out how I would get to the hostel from the train stop. Plus it would be dark and super late before I arrived into an unknown city. Guess it would be another night at the Blue Parrot.
Stephany had offered me her free night on her bed since she was leaving by 8pm for her overnight bus trip to Melbourne. So I paid another $15 to take a shuttle back to the hostel, which took another hour or so to repeat the process of filling the bus until it drove to the city. I didn’t arrive back at the hostel until 5-6pm! Fun stuff I tell ya. I go to check in to see if I could take Stephany’s bed for free…but no! The owner of the Blue Parrot wouldn’t allow it, even though I had stayed there over a week and would only be there until 4am to leave for my flight the next morning. LAME! I frantically tried to cancel the hostel before I left the airport but the number was disconnected. Finally after searching for half an hour for another number that might work (which didn’t), I called a branch of the same hostel which gave me the same phone number I dialed. GREAT! But thankfully she made the changes to my reservations and didn’t suffer the consequences of paying for that evening. After settling a bit from the fiasco, I watched a bit of TV until it was bedtime. The only thing that made my night was that, it was the best sleep I’ve had since I’ve been in Sydney, despite the fact it was only 4 hours because of my early flight. There was no partying downstairs in the kitchen, no loud roommates entering the room late, and finally NO snorers in the room. It was a quiet night ☺
I woke up early and thought about catching another shuttle or even the train, but didn’t want to take any chances so I hailed for a taxi to the airport. He was a really nice New Zealander that I had an interesting and informative conversation with unlike the mute driver I had when I first got into the city. He gave me good suggestions on where to visit in New Zealand along with other things and I guess that alone made it worth the $35 it took to pay for the fare. I walked over to check my bags…only to find out that they were too heavy (only 2 bags, not weighing over 10kg together were allowed as carry ons) and paid an extra $40 for a 8kg bag. UGH!
So FINALLY after all the shuttle rides, taxi, the switching of flights, extra night @ the Blue Parrot and the extra luggage costs…the 1 hour mistake cost a total of $232 and a massive amount of stress.
Note to self/Lesson Learned: Check and RECHECK when your flight leaves and ARRIVE 2 hours before it leaves no matter if it’s international or domestic.
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