Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Part 1 - London to Sydney

[This has been previously webbed, but not here]

"Hi, guys! How you doin'?"

This isn't the greeting you usually expect to receive from an immigration official, but stumbling off a BA 747-400 early one morning at Sydney's Kingston Smith airport it was nice to present our passports and have someone actually be nice to us. We'd left London about 23 hours earlier after a day at work (the theory being that it would be easier to sleep - worked for my then-other half, Kat, but not for me) and had been sitting in economy class ever since except for a couple of hours wandering around Bangkok airport during a stopover. The flight had been pretty full, with more rugby shirts than usual owing to the number of British and Irish rugby fans heading to Australia before the World Cup.

We had a stopover in Sydney of about 11 hours before taking another flight to Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. As spending the whole time sitting in the transit lounge wasn't too attractive, I'd sorted out visas (easy to do online) so we could have a bit of a wander around Sydney and kill time by doing a bit of sightseeing. A saintly check-in clerk at Heathrow had managed to tag our bags all the way through to Port Vila so we didn't have to worry about them - just passport control, past lots of terrifying signs about Australian quarantine rules, through customs (bags are X-rayed with machines specially set up to detect fruit, veg and whingeing Pommie bastards) and out into the big wide world.

The rail link from Sydney airport is fast and efficient, so some time before 0700 we found ourselves standing blearily at Circular Quay, looking at the million-postcard view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The strange thing was that nobody was around, except for the occasional jogger and the occasional bird, including an ibis demonstrating why its beak was not designed for scavenging discarded junk food.

It was the start of a bank holiday weekend, so we wandered around the deserted streets looking for somewhere we could have breakfast. Just about everywhere was closed, but just as we were about to give up and eat our shoes we found a pleasant cafe inside one of the city railway stations and scarfed down bacon and eggs and a whole lot of tea as well as visiting the station bogs, which were in need of a clean after the heavy Friday night, to clean up and change clothes.

The city slowly came to life and our day passed in a surreal haze, which included a bit of last-minute clothes shopping and the discovery of how enormously helpful and friendly people in Australia tend to be, before we decided to jump on the ferry across to Manly, on the other side of the harbour. The Scouts were selling chocolate to passers-by to raise money and there was a real bank-holiday party atmosphere, with the Manly jazz festival providing accompaniment while we had some excellent fish and chips. After the trip back the effects of lack of sleep and jetlag really hit, and we passed most of the afternoon in a vague haze of fatigue wandering around the Opera House area, stopping off to sample that great Aussie obsession, beer, before heading back out to the airport.

There were a surprising number of people checking in for the Air Vanuatu flight to Port Vila. Almost all of them were white - with the exception of the cabin staff, the number of ni-Vanuatu on the plane could probably have been counted on the fingers of both hands. There were the usual assortment of diplo-brats, expats and expat families, and as always, a couple of unaccompanied minors being dispatched after visits to relatives. There were a number of tourists as well, most of whom would have been on package tours to the luxury resorts around the main islands of Efate and Espiritu Santo. For many of them, the only parts of Vanuatu they would see would be their resort, the beach in front of it and the road from the airport.