Australia Summer 2024 - Day 1: Travel Day
Welcome
Yesterday we flew to Sydney, Australia.
We were a bit rusty after several months off. I showed up at the airport with too many basses and one of them had to be sent home in a taxi because our guitar cases were both full.
It was 8:30am on Thursday morning and we were at Auckland’s most international airport, trolleys piled high with black plastic cases and carrying an excited optimism in our hearts. We wheeled these items in through the automatic doors and didn’t bother to look back, focusing on the tasks ahead and leaving our emotions and weaknesses at the curbside, ready to pick up once the job was good and done.
Air New Zealand’s premium check-in is deep in the centre of the terminal and the lack of natural light in this ground-floor room is compensated for with an enchanting array of strip lighting as well as functional down lights to aid the check-in process. There were staff waiting to help us attach bag tags to our bags and we stood back while they worked, admiring the efficiency of their movements.
After breezing through security, we headed through to the crown jewel in the Air New Zealand empire, the Auckland International Airport Koru lounge, a sanctuary that rewards customers of Air New Zealand’s loyalty programme with a well labelled buffet, diverse seating options, and the ability to order coffee through an app. I served myself a mostly hot breakfast that included scrambled tofu with vegetables, hash browns with ketchup, streaky bacon, a breakfast smoothie, and double chocolate ganache oats.
The flight boarded late, and the plane was larger than expected; a long-haul Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner pressed into the trans-Tasman route to service a pressing demand for mid-week travel. As we rotated away from runway 23L the pilot took us on a slow series of climbing turns, dipping the port wing to offer everyone in the left window seats a breathtaking view of Tāmaki Makaurau, our favourite city, sprawled across the isthmus between the Manukau and the Waitemata harbours.
Motuihe in the lower right and then Motutapu above it and the darker green shield volcano Rangitoto to the left. Further left is the entrance to the Waitemata.
Three hours later we crossed Australia’s south-eastern coastline, descending over Botany Bay and enjoying the smooth touchdown onto runway 34L gifted to us by this competent flight crew. After a lengthy taxi our aircraft finally came to the halt outside the terminal and with the ding of the seatbelt sign reaching my ears I exploded out of my seat, clambering over my neighbours to reach the aisle and stand in it. There was a delay as the driver for the airbridge forgot to turn up. I waited patiently though and ten minutes later was rewarded with the ability to disembark from the aircraft and file into the terminal.
Border Security: Australia’s Front Line was filming when we passed through customs - at least there was a sign alerting us to this fact - though we saw no cameras, and no one rushed over to watch us get our carnet signed and stamped.
This lack of attention was disappointing, but our smiles returned when we emerged into the arrivals area to find our tour manager Emma waiting for us holding a superb welcome balloon. She had rented our favourite model of car to drive us around in, a gleaming white KIA Carnival, and we happily piled in for the trip to our hotel.
We were quartered in Camperdown, southwest of Sydney’s city centre, and we enjoyed a half hour drive in air-conditioned comfort before arriving in this leafy suburb and disembarking into a hotel lobby adorned with a fine chandelier and saturated with the sounds of saxophone and piano covers of contemporary pop songs.
The fine selection of pamphlets in the Rydges lobby.
After a relaxing afternoon spent sheltering under the air conditioning from a hot Sydney afternoon, we headed out with Emma for an early evening swim, venturing all the way to the coast where a string of beautiful white sand beaches divides the city’s eastern suburbs from the expanse of the Tasman Sea. There was a surprise waiting for us in the back seat of the KIA Carnival and this took the form of a handsome animal, a dog called Cookie that was brown and speckled, and had slightly fishy breath. Emma had brought this beautiful dog along and Cookie was very excited to go for a swim. We headed to a dog beach that was in a small, rocky cove just up from Tamarama Point, housed in a gorgeous natural amphitheatre that was already awash with a performance conducted by dogs, balls, and crashing surf.
A refreshing swim was exactly the thing we needed to welcome us onto this Australian tour, and we were treated well by the powerful waves, battered and salinised by the beautiful clear water. Then we walked a couple of beaches over to a cute Argentinian restaurant and finished our evening with a curbside meal, dining under the stars as the sun went down and the evening finally cooled off.