April 26, 2006 – Getting to the Outback

We left Launceston early in the morning after returning a slightly damaged rental car that was offset after being docked an extra hour rental fee. As we stepped onto the tarmac and I attempted to snap a picture of the very cheesy, budget airline’s ‘puffection’ Domino’s pizza plane, we realized that we had accidentally left my camera in a small compartment in the rental car. I had to hold back the tears as we tried to decide if the camera or its few pictures of Queenstown was worth the hassle of chasing from Hertz.

We arrived at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne and were faced with an annoying subtlety. Melbourne has 2 airports – Tullamarine and Avalon, unfortunately we arrived into one from Launceston and our flight to Adelaide was from the other. Although we realized this at the time of booking our flight and left 3hours between flights to get from one to the other, we were forced to take a cab over 90km to get there on time. After the most outrageous cab fare, we were at the airport ridiculously early for a flight that, ironically, departed an hour late! We arrived in Adelaide and made our way to the city to pick up our rental car and spend the night. We found a cozy family run hostel that was having a Wednesday night meal where everyone was invited. After a terrific meal where Laure and I were entertained by an older man and woman who we figure must own the hostel, I came in fifth in a pool competition.