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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Friday 28 January 2005 (Day View) – I depart Cooktown, miss my flight in Cairns, and eventually arrive in Brisbane.

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28.01.2005 – Friday 28 January – Cooktown to Brisbane

• I discovered another way to use spare money: missing flights – but today started earlier than that... I was woken early by Mum – getting up doesn’t feel so good after only a few hours sleep, something I should have thought about back when I wasn’t packing yesterday I suppose. We drove to the airport, and I departed for Cairns, but not until the pilot had stressed everyone by spending several minutes trying to warm the left engine – every time he put load on it, it’d die, so he’d rev it out for another minute and try again. Silas picked me up in Cairns, and we went to Amos’s place, where we had a bite to eat and a chat, before heading back to the airport for my flight to Brisbane. Ironically, we actually went to get coffee first, but couldn’t find a parking spot so decided to head out to the airport a bit early. All airlines have some time they require you to arrive in advance of their departure time – half an hour with Jetstar. Unfortunately, I understood this time as more of a guideline so people wouldn’t be late, rather than an absolute cut-off. I have nearly always arrived just on time in the past, actually making a point of arriving only half an hour before the flight, as it avoids waiting in a large queue. However, as I found out today, this doesn’t always work – Jetstar close check-in at precisely half an hour before departure, or one minute before I arrive. They then, unsurprisingly, refuse to accept unattended luggage, so would not fly my luggage separately, meaning that without being able to check it in, I couldn’t fly. The service lady offered to transfer my ticket to a flight a couple of hours later and allow me to pay the fifty-dollar difference, which was nice of her as the ticket conditions don’t permit that, but Virgin had a flight leaving roughly the same time as my original flight, so I took that instead. $175 later and I was boarding my Virgin flight, just a few minutes after my original flight boarded. Virgin closes their check-in fifteen minutes prior to departure, and it seems, will attempt to assist late passengers, unlike Jetstar.

• I collected my luggage in Brisbane and waited in the arrivals area, but Bronwen didn’t arrive. Eventually I was paged over the intercom – Bronwen had made her way to the arrival gate, and was wondering where I was. We drove to her place, where her parents were just leaving for Stradbroke Island, and had a lovely night cuddling.