Skyring
Established Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2005
- Posts
- 2,199
- Qantas
- LT Silver
More years ago than I care to remember, there was a skinny young boy on a "farmlet" south of Brisbane. It was days of space exploration and moonshots, Woodstock and Vietnam, long summer holidays that were far too short, sunny days playing cricket in the backyard and rainy day Monopoly on the verandah. It was the old Country Party Queensland. It was cyclones and snakes, air rifles and schoolbuses.
This boy did a lot of reading and a lot of dreaming. Middle-Earth, Biggles, Arthur C Clarke and the National Geographic. Looking up something in World Book could take a whole day of browsing and flipping from article to article.
This boy had a telescope, and he'd look out on the distant hills through gaps in the trees. It was trees all around, apart from a view out over Coronation Road to the farmlets opposit, where the Reubens had a ferocious Alsation, and the Boykos had a backyard cricket pitch that wasn't earth worn smooth.
At night he'd go out and look at the stars and the moon, roaming amongst the craters and seas of that silver world, hunting down the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. Faint nebulae and fuzzy globular clusters.
And every now and then, there'd be a visitor sliding through the starfields, a magic ship with a row of portholes and coloured navigation lights. Ansett DC-9 or TAA Whispering T-Jet heading south out of Eagle Farm for Sydney or Melbourne.
The telescope would follow this high flight as it crossed the sky, a growing line of windows, a glimpse of golden lights, lose it as it jiggled through the telescope, find it again diminishing southwards until it was faintly swallowed in the horizon haze.
The boy would dream of flying on one of those streamlined birds all the way to the far cities of Sydney with the harbour and the bridge, Canberra with the ultramodern buildings and the grand national institutions, planned boulevards, parkland and a man-made lake.
It was the stuff of fantasy and excitement. What millionaires rode these craft in their jetsetting lifestyle? What TV stars, what famous figures, what rich and famous celebrities out of the Australian Woman's Weekly?
Some weekends, we'd get into the Belmont and drive down to visit the rels in Mudgeeraba, a sleepy little hamlet on the Gold Coast hinterland. The Pacific Highway was solid traffic on a single lane, the Gaven Way to Nerang a series of cuttings hewn from the solid rock, and the road up, up, up to Mudgeeraba a country lane. The town itself was a school, a shop, Wobbly Bob's hotel, and a few houses.
And after we'd had a Sunday roast, and Dad had had a couple down the pub with Uncle Tom, we'd climb into the station wagon, we five kids distributed around, like as not I'd be curled up in the back in a nest of pillows and blankets, reading "Space Cadet" for the zillionth time, and Dad would fight his way onto the highway, inching north until we could find an exit at Beenleigh and take the long back way home to Park Ridge.
7 November 2008
Canberra to Brisbane
QF962 B737-400 VH-TJL Swift
Seat: 7A/B
Scheduled: 1910
Boarding: 1850 (12)
Pushback: 1910
Takeoff: 1920 (to the north)
Descent: 1920 (Brisbane time)
Landing: 1942 (from west)
Gate: 1946 (16)
We got our skinny teenage son to drive us to the airport. No luggage, just carryon, so we went through security, turned right up the ramp and presented our computer-printed boarding passes to the lovely lady at the brand new Business lounge entrance.
No upgrades on this fare, but we sat down inside. G&T for Kerri, her brand new 25th anniversary ring sparkling on her finger, and a flute of champagne for her happy husband.
Pretzels and bries and cold meats and semidried tomatoes. They brought out some chicken pies just before our flight was called, and I cut one in half, in case the plane food wasn't enough.
Not bad, as lounges go, though there's not much of a view.
7A on the 734 doesn't have a window, and I regretted not checking against seatguru. There were other window seats available through online checkin, but 7A looked like a good-un, even if it was on the sunset side heading north.
As it happened, it was clouds all the way north. Clouds turning into night, and there was a faint view of Brisbane before we were down at one of the gates in the Qantas circle.
But there was dinner along the way. "Stir-fried chicken and rice". If that chicken had been anywhere near a wok, I'm a Chinaman. It was a few lumps of chicken in a poured sauce, mostly rice, not a vegetable to be seen. Frozen mini-roll, frozen butter, small bottle of water, scrap of chocolate to go with the coffee we never saw. I asked for orange juice - had two champers in the lounge, and I had to drive yet - got a plastic tumbler worth, arrange it for a photograph of the splendid repast, accidentally knock over the juice.
Yikes, disaster! It overflowed the tray table and down into my lap. FA was mighty, piling on napkins and cloths, but I was well and truly soaked, with only shorts for emergencies.
Luckily, it mostly got sponged away and dried off by the time we were in Brisbane, though when I rose there was a nasty-looking damp patch that might give the next passenger a few thoughts they didn't need.
Downstairs and outside to the rental office, car ready with a jingle of keys for this Blue Chip Preferred member. Nice little Mitsubishi Lancer, perhaps two doors too many for the two of us, but we had more trouble with the GPS than the controls. Someone had programmed it to avoid tollways, and the best way to the Gold Coast was the Gateway Bridge, with a $2.90 toll.
My dear wife isn't at her best with little black boxes full of electronics, and it was some time before she was able to find the menu option that changed from "cheap" to "fast". In the mean time, we listened to that disgruntled little voice tell us to exit the motorway, oh, recalculating route now, a couple of dozen times.
Eagle Farm to the Gold Coast is not difficult, but it can get tricky if you are told to get off the motorway, go through Fortitude Valley, Old Cleveland road etc. If some tourists fresh off the plane from Hawaii had got this GPS, they might have had a more interesting ride to Surfers than we did. We just ignored the voice.
There's a series of cranes and construction gantries all the way over the Brisbane river beside the Gateway Bridge. Hard to imagine that this six-lane structure ever gets crowded, but it does, and they are duplicating it. I remember as a young marriedy, the day the bridge opened, a magnificent feat of engineering, and some galoot toppled off the rail right at the top.
More roadworks all the way down the Gateway Arterial. The sooner they upgrade this road to something like the six or eight lane Gold Coast Motorway feeding into it, the better. I guess they are working as fast as they can, but there's always the threat of congestion delaying our return, when times might be tight.
The rental car is sweet enough. Clean, new, electric windows, airconditiong, central locking, cruise control, intermittent wipers. All taken for granted nowadays, but what a sciencefiction supercar it would have been back in the Sixties. Not that the GPS would have had anything to latch onto.
I've lost count of the number of cars I've driven this year. Rental cars in Brisbane twice, Perth, France, England once each. Couple of test drives while selecting the most recent purchase, plus our own four. Then there's all the cabs I've driven, especially while my own car has been off the road, or when the owner swapped my regular car.
At least they all work more or less the same. The worst was the manual car in France, which tested my skills, especially when I drove it around the Arc de Triomphe at about the same time as the arrival of the Olympic torch there.
Smith Street Motorway and arrive at FIL's house, where SIL and BIL are also staying the night, with alcohol. A pleasant evening and zonk out, exhausted.
Saturday, and FIL makes scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Yum. Then it's load a nervous wife into the car and head down to the Marriott at Surfers Paradise, where her 25th anniversary university class reunion is being held. Here the GPS is required, but we can't follow instructions as the concrete barriers from the Indy race are still being cleared away. We make it in, I drop her off with instructions to call if it gets too fraught, and head for MIL's place, where I've been told off to take her shopping and help her with the garden.
She's a tiny woman, frail and getting on, but Lord, can she shop!
Luckily, I'm a taxidriver, and I know how it is with little old ladies. They save up a list of things for when they can get a chance to have the use of a car for a while. I'm always happy to hold doors open, fold up walking frames, cart groceries and so on. Some cabbies are rush rush rush for the next fare, but I feel the passenger's needs, and I make myself useful.
Like all little old ladies, she knows the exact best way to the shops. She's done it often enough with a cabbie to spot the slightest deviation from the optimum route.
We pull up outside Bunnings, find a good park, and I swear for the next three hours, this frail old lady and I explored every square centimetre, every aisle, every shelf of that vast building. We broke for lunch in the cafe and resumed. The trolley was groaning on its castors by the time we finished.
Loaded it into the car, drove home, unloaded and set to work in the garden, weeding, sprinkling pebbles. finished up, back to the hardware shop to refund an item that had proven to be not the right size, buy some more pebbles, follow the voice back to FIL's house where I fell onto the bed and asleep for an exhausted nap.
Phone call somewhere past four, pick up the wife, more deviations, petulant voice on the mobile as I make my way up the rank, where the hell are you? Here I am, I replied, drawing up in front of wife with phone to her ear.
Class of 83 looking more rotund and prosperous than when last seen, particular friends didn't show, but had a good time anyway, sparkly new ring on finger helping out.
Back to MIL's place, Kerri chats with Mum while happy husband labours some more in garden in between rainshowers.
Home again, drop in at grog shop for sixpack of Barefoot beer with twist of lemon and lime, tastes refreshing but a bit too much like a GOFFA by the end of the bottle.
Cable TV documentaries lulling to sleep.
Sunday morning, breakfast at Main Beach Surf Club overlooking Pacific. good food, cheap prices, millionaire's view out over the beach.
Home, pack, hit the road in convoy up to Mudgeeraba to Woodchopper's Inn for lunch with extended family. Three generations, younger mainly electronic, elder containing fair amount of metal, great lunch had with view out over mountains and rolling green hills. Place is a lot bigger than I remember from my youth, like about a hundred times.
Farewells all round, hit the road, motorway all the way up - we're at the airport in the hour. Took us fifteen minutes at the Shell. Everybody and his mother-in-law wanted to fill up, and I chose the wrong queue. Waiting and I wonder which side the petrol flap is on. Pull the lever and there's a "spang" from the left side, which happened to be the bowser side.
I've been caught before with a less than full fuel tank, you see. I think I'm still paying off that tank, which ironically enough was a Brisbane-Gold Coast jaunt a few years back. Lesson learnt.
This old cabbie took a look under the back seat cushion, but no spare change to be found. Oh well.
We had about half an hour to go by the time we hit the self-checkin. Got our BPs, 11E and F, not bad, though once again on the sunny side heading south, through security, and I persuaded the wife we'd be more comfortable in the Business Lounge for the ten minutes or so left. Besides, there's always the chance of a delay.
Another bubbly from the bar, check on the chance of an upgrade, but the flight is full up, grab some pretzels and wait out. Five minute delay, flight called, just a few gates away. As we stroll out I hear the flight being called in the Qantas Club, so we beat the rush. Amazingly for a full flight, there isn't a line of passengers at the gate, even though it had been posted for at least half an hour.
9 November 2008
Brisbane toCanberra
QF961 B737-800 VH-VXT Townsville
Seat: 11E/F
Scheduled: 1540
Boarding: 1530 (23)
Pushback: 1546
Takeoff: 1552 (to the west)
Descent: 1755 (Canberra time)
Landing: 1818 (from west)
Gate: 1823 (14)
11E is just forward of the wing, and most of the view is taken up by jet engine. Humph. I settle myself in, write down salient facts on a personalised 3x5 card in my Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase, and pull out some gum in readiness for takeoff. If I chew gum, it keeps my tubes open, otherwise my ears gum up instead of my mouth, and I'm deaf for a week.
"Is that gum?" my wife asks. "Can I have some?"
Of course she can. "Do you know where I got that?" I ask, holding out a packet of Stride.
"America?"
"New York."
Harlem, actually, but I don't say that.
In my boyhood, the cigarette ads on the black and white television had the gentleman offering the lovely lady Peter Stuyvesant as they waited for their Concorde to head off to New York. I'm a faint echo of that boyhood fantasy.
Takeoff, a rush as we climb into the clouds, and the murky view over Brisbane is gone. I am aiming my camera at Mount Gravatt when we hit the clouds, so there's no chance to try to follow the roads south through the vast suburbia where my childhood home once lay.
There's a snack. A tub of salsa and some rice crackers. I opt for a careful juice. There's no champagne, and that would have cost me six dollars anyway.
"Next time," I insist to my wife, "we're flying Business, where the booze is free."
Somewhere over the Hunter the clouds cleared. I looked down at the cooling towers of a couple of power plants, their lakes and mines in close attendance. Sydney was scattered suburbs, rivers, bridges, and then there was Lake Burley Griffin gleaming in the declining sun. We swung around south, passing Jerrabombera and Queanbeyan, and then our shadow came closer and closer, finally joining us with a thump.
Call the boy for a pickup, we're home!
This boy did a lot of reading and a lot of dreaming. Middle-Earth, Biggles, Arthur C Clarke and the National Geographic. Looking up something in World Book could take a whole day of browsing and flipping from article to article.
This boy had a telescope, and he'd look out on the distant hills through gaps in the trees. It was trees all around, apart from a view out over Coronation Road to the farmlets opposit, where the Reubens had a ferocious Alsation, and the Boykos had a backyard cricket pitch that wasn't earth worn smooth.
At night he'd go out and look at the stars and the moon, roaming amongst the craters and seas of that silver world, hunting down the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. Faint nebulae and fuzzy globular clusters.
And every now and then, there'd be a visitor sliding through the starfields, a magic ship with a row of portholes and coloured navigation lights. Ansett DC-9 or TAA Whispering T-Jet heading south out of Eagle Farm for Sydney or Melbourne.
The telescope would follow this high flight as it crossed the sky, a growing line of windows, a glimpse of golden lights, lose it as it jiggled through the telescope, find it again diminishing southwards until it was faintly swallowed in the horizon haze.
The boy would dream of flying on one of those streamlined birds all the way to the far cities of Sydney with the harbour and the bridge, Canberra with the ultramodern buildings and the grand national institutions, planned boulevards, parkland and a man-made lake.
It was the stuff of fantasy and excitement. What millionaires rode these craft in their jetsetting lifestyle? What TV stars, what famous figures, what rich and famous celebrities out of the Australian Woman's Weekly?
Some weekends, we'd get into the Belmont and drive down to visit the rels in Mudgeeraba, a sleepy little hamlet on the Gold Coast hinterland. The Pacific Highway was solid traffic on a single lane, the Gaven Way to Nerang a series of cuttings hewn from the solid rock, and the road up, up, up to Mudgeeraba a country lane. The town itself was a school, a shop, Wobbly Bob's hotel, and a few houses.
And after we'd had a Sunday roast, and Dad had had a couple down the pub with Uncle Tom, we'd climb into the station wagon, we five kids distributed around, like as not I'd be curled up in the back in a nest of pillows and blankets, reading "Space Cadet" for the zillionth time, and Dad would fight his way onto the highway, inching north until we could find an exit at Beenleigh and take the long back way home to Park Ridge.
7 November 2008
Canberra to Brisbane
QF962 B737-400 VH-TJL Swift
Seat: 7A/B
Scheduled: 1910
Boarding: 1850 (12)
Pushback: 1910
Takeoff: 1920 (to the north)
Descent: 1920 (Brisbane time)
Landing: 1942 (from west)
Gate: 1946 (16)
We got our skinny teenage son to drive us to the airport. No luggage, just carryon, so we went through security, turned right up the ramp and presented our computer-printed boarding passes to the lovely lady at the brand new Business lounge entrance.
No upgrades on this fare, but we sat down inside. G&T for Kerri, her brand new 25th anniversary ring sparkling on her finger, and a flute of champagne for her happy husband.
Pretzels and bries and cold meats and semidried tomatoes. They brought out some chicken pies just before our flight was called, and I cut one in half, in case the plane food wasn't enough.
Not bad, as lounges go, though there's not much of a view.
7A on the 734 doesn't have a window, and I regretted not checking against seatguru. There were other window seats available through online checkin, but 7A looked like a good-un, even if it was on the sunset side heading north.
As it happened, it was clouds all the way north. Clouds turning into night, and there was a faint view of Brisbane before we were down at one of the gates in the Qantas circle.
But there was dinner along the way. "Stir-fried chicken and rice". If that chicken had been anywhere near a wok, I'm a Chinaman. It was a few lumps of chicken in a poured sauce, mostly rice, not a vegetable to be seen. Frozen mini-roll, frozen butter, small bottle of water, scrap of chocolate to go with the coffee we never saw. I asked for orange juice - had two champers in the lounge, and I had to drive yet - got a plastic tumbler worth, arrange it for a photograph of the splendid repast, accidentally knock over the juice.
Yikes, disaster! It overflowed the tray table and down into my lap. FA was mighty, piling on napkins and cloths, but I was well and truly soaked, with only shorts for emergencies.
Luckily, it mostly got sponged away and dried off by the time we were in Brisbane, though when I rose there was a nasty-looking damp patch that might give the next passenger a few thoughts they didn't need.
Downstairs and outside to the rental office, car ready with a jingle of keys for this Blue Chip Preferred member. Nice little Mitsubishi Lancer, perhaps two doors too many for the two of us, but we had more trouble with the GPS than the controls. Someone had programmed it to avoid tollways, and the best way to the Gold Coast was the Gateway Bridge, with a $2.90 toll.
My dear wife isn't at her best with little black boxes full of electronics, and it was some time before she was able to find the menu option that changed from "cheap" to "fast". In the mean time, we listened to that disgruntled little voice tell us to exit the motorway, oh, recalculating route now, a couple of dozen times.
Eagle Farm to the Gold Coast is not difficult, but it can get tricky if you are told to get off the motorway, go through Fortitude Valley, Old Cleveland road etc. If some tourists fresh off the plane from Hawaii had got this GPS, they might have had a more interesting ride to Surfers than we did. We just ignored the voice.
There's a series of cranes and construction gantries all the way over the Brisbane river beside the Gateway Bridge. Hard to imagine that this six-lane structure ever gets crowded, but it does, and they are duplicating it. I remember as a young marriedy, the day the bridge opened, a magnificent feat of engineering, and some galoot toppled off the rail right at the top.
More roadworks all the way down the Gateway Arterial. The sooner they upgrade this road to something like the six or eight lane Gold Coast Motorway feeding into it, the better. I guess they are working as fast as they can, but there's always the threat of congestion delaying our return, when times might be tight.
The rental car is sweet enough. Clean, new, electric windows, airconditiong, central locking, cruise control, intermittent wipers. All taken for granted nowadays, but what a sciencefiction supercar it would have been back in the Sixties. Not that the GPS would have had anything to latch onto.
I've lost count of the number of cars I've driven this year. Rental cars in Brisbane twice, Perth, France, England once each. Couple of test drives while selecting the most recent purchase, plus our own four. Then there's all the cabs I've driven, especially while my own car has been off the road, or when the owner swapped my regular car.
At least they all work more or less the same. The worst was the manual car in France, which tested my skills, especially when I drove it around the Arc de Triomphe at about the same time as the arrival of the Olympic torch there.
Smith Street Motorway and arrive at FIL's house, where SIL and BIL are also staying the night, with alcohol. A pleasant evening and zonk out, exhausted.
Saturday, and FIL makes scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Yum. Then it's load a nervous wife into the car and head down to the Marriott at Surfers Paradise, where her 25th anniversary university class reunion is being held. Here the GPS is required, but we can't follow instructions as the concrete barriers from the Indy race are still being cleared away. We make it in, I drop her off with instructions to call if it gets too fraught, and head for MIL's place, where I've been told off to take her shopping and help her with the garden.
She's a tiny woman, frail and getting on, but Lord, can she shop!
Luckily, I'm a taxidriver, and I know how it is with little old ladies. They save up a list of things for when they can get a chance to have the use of a car for a while. I'm always happy to hold doors open, fold up walking frames, cart groceries and so on. Some cabbies are rush rush rush for the next fare, but I feel the passenger's needs, and I make myself useful.
Like all little old ladies, she knows the exact best way to the shops. She's done it often enough with a cabbie to spot the slightest deviation from the optimum route.
We pull up outside Bunnings, find a good park, and I swear for the next three hours, this frail old lady and I explored every square centimetre, every aisle, every shelf of that vast building. We broke for lunch in the cafe and resumed. The trolley was groaning on its castors by the time we finished.
Loaded it into the car, drove home, unloaded and set to work in the garden, weeding, sprinkling pebbles. finished up, back to the hardware shop to refund an item that had proven to be not the right size, buy some more pebbles, follow the voice back to FIL's house where I fell onto the bed and asleep for an exhausted nap.
Phone call somewhere past four, pick up the wife, more deviations, petulant voice on the mobile as I make my way up the rank, where the hell are you? Here I am, I replied, drawing up in front of wife with phone to her ear.
Class of 83 looking more rotund and prosperous than when last seen, particular friends didn't show, but had a good time anyway, sparkly new ring on finger helping out.
Back to MIL's place, Kerri chats with Mum while happy husband labours some more in garden in between rainshowers.
Home again, drop in at grog shop for sixpack of Barefoot beer with twist of lemon and lime, tastes refreshing but a bit too much like a GOFFA by the end of the bottle.
Cable TV documentaries lulling to sleep.
Sunday morning, breakfast at Main Beach Surf Club overlooking Pacific. good food, cheap prices, millionaire's view out over the beach.
Home, pack, hit the road in convoy up to Mudgeeraba to Woodchopper's Inn for lunch with extended family. Three generations, younger mainly electronic, elder containing fair amount of metal, great lunch had with view out over mountains and rolling green hills. Place is a lot bigger than I remember from my youth, like about a hundred times.
Farewells all round, hit the road, motorway all the way up - we're at the airport in the hour. Took us fifteen minutes at the Shell. Everybody and his mother-in-law wanted to fill up, and I chose the wrong queue. Waiting and I wonder which side the petrol flap is on. Pull the lever and there's a "spang" from the left side, which happened to be the bowser side.
I've been caught before with a less than full fuel tank, you see. I think I'm still paying off that tank, which ironically enough was a Brisbane-Gold Coast jaunt a few years back. Lesson learnt.
This old cabbie took a look under the back seat cushion, but no spare change to be found. Oh well.
We had about half an hour to go by the time we hit the self-checkin. Got our BPs, 11E and F, not bad, though once again on the sunny side heading south, through security, and I persuaded the wife we'd be more comfortable in the Business Lounge for the ten minutes or so left. Besides, there's always the chance of a delay.
Another bubbly from the bar, check on the chance of an upgrade, but the flight is full up, grab some pretzels and wait out. Five minute delay, flight called, just a few gates away. As we stroll out I hear the flight being called in the Qantas Club, so we beat the rush. Amazingly for a full flight, there isn't a line of passengers at the gate, even though it had been posted for at least half an hour.
9 November 2008
Brisbane toCanberra
QF961 B737-800 VH-VXT Townsville
Seat: 11E/F
Scheduled: 1540
Boarding: 1530 (23)
Pushback: 1546
Takeoff: 1552 (to the west)
Descent: 1755 (Canberra time)
Landing: 1818 (from west)
Gate: 1823 (14)
11E is just forward of the wing, and most of the view is taken up by jet engine. Humph. I settle myself in, write down salient facts on a personalised 3x5 card in my Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase, and pull out some gum in readiness for takeoff. If I chew gum, it keeps my tubes open, otherwise my ears gum up instead of my mouth, and I'm deaf for a week.
"Is that gum?" my wife asks. "Can I have some?"
Of course she can. "Do you know where I got that?" I ask, holding out a packet of Stride.
"America?"
"New York."
Harlem, actually, but I don't say that.
In my boyhood, the cigarette ads on the black and white television had the gentleman offering the lovely lady Peter Stuyvesant as they waited for their Concorde to head off to New York. I'm a faint echo of that boyhood fantasy.
Takeoff, a rush as we climb into the clouds, and the murky view over Brisbane is gone. I am aiming my camera at Mount Gravatt when we hit the clouds, so there's no chance to try to follow the roads south through the vast suburbia where my childhood home once lay.
There's a snack. A tub of salsa and some rice crackers. I opt for a careful juice. There's no champagne, and that would have cost me six dollars anyway.
"Next time," I insist to my wife, "we're flying Business, where the booze is free."
Somewhere over the Hunter the clouds cleared. I looked down at the cooling towers of a couple of power plants, their lakes and mines in close attendance. Sydney was scattered suburbs, rivers, bridges, and then there was Lake Burley Griffin gleaming in the declining sun. We swung around south, passing Jerrabombera and Queanbeyan, and then our shadow came closer and closer, finally joining us with a thump.
Call the boy for a pickup, we're home!
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