Since we had to fly
through Australia to get back to PNG from New Zealand, we decided to
stop in Melbourne on our way home to visit a college friend who lives
there. She is also a missionary, and we have supported her for about
two years now—what a unique and wonderful opportunity to be able to
visit a missionary you support in Australia!
The flights from
Queenstown to Melbourne don’t depart until late afternoon, so we
had a relaxing morning of walking around the beautiful city of
Queenstown, including a stroll through an artisan show we hadn’t
known about. Our flight was supposed to get into Melbourne at 5 p.m.
on Friday, after which we would spend all of Saturday with our friend
and depart on Sunday morning. As we were sitting at the gate in the
Queenstown airport, awaiting our boarding call in about an hour, an
airline worker stepped to the microphone and said the dreaded words,
“Your flight has been canceled.”
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| Queenstown, New Zealand |
It’s a very small
airport, so that was the only flight to Melbourne that day on that
airline. Since we had already turned in our departure cards, we had
technically left the country, so we spent some time waiting
in an area between the terminal and the tarmac until we could
officially be allowed “back” into the country. After a long
period of waiting and eating free food, we were booked onto a flight
going to Auckland that evening, put up in a hotel there for the night,
and given a flight to Melbourne from Auckland the next morning, getting us to Melbourne around noon. So what was meant to be a day
and a half stop turned into a half-day stop!
Once we finally got
to Melbourne (and got through the hour-long line at customs), we had
a great time. Our first stop was lunch at an Asian restaurant (I
forget which variety). The menu included a jellyfish salad, and since
I’ve never had jellyfish, I decided to add that to my list of
interesting seafood eaten, which also includes squid and octopus. It
was pretty good, though I suspect that was because it tasted mostly
like soy sauce in this case!
Following lunch, we
went to a park where we saw gum trees, several varieties of birds in
the wild, and a gift shop! Yes...I love gift shops and all things
touristy. 😊 Sadly, no koalas were spotted in the trees or kangaroos
on the roads, though we did see a sign for a kangaroo crossing.
We
had fun going to a grocery store and trying to figure out what the
unique Australian fruits were, and I got to cut up and taste a rock
melon! Okay...it’s really just a cantaloupe! The final piece of the
adventure was trying to figure out when to get up the next
morning...it was the day they switched their clocks in that region of
Australia, but since they are in the southern hemisphere, it was
opposite of the way we switch our clocks in the spring in the
northern hemisphere (and we don't do it at all in PNG)! Once we figured out what time it was, we made it
to the airport with plenty of time for our final leg of the journey.
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