The first day. It was raining, which was not good. So I packed the umbrella, this took my backpack over the 4 kg limit that the Dash-8 would have. Becuase of the rain, I walked down to the station and caught the train to the domestic terminal. The man at the ticket office asked if I wanted the International Terminal. When I got to the domestic terminal, I found he was right. I was at the wrong terminal. So I had to catch the train back one stop to the International Terminal. On the way I met a girl from Shanghai who was trying to make a quick change of flight. She raced off. I checked in and went through customs using my drivers licence. I think on this day I showed my licence more times than I would normally do in 20 years. I caught the flight with not a lot of time to spare. It was a Qantas Boeing 767 flying Sydney-Brisbane-Manilla. I had checked my luggage through to Rockhampton (which confusingly is called ROK). However some quick discussions with the crew after the announcements, I found that in Brisbane I had collect my luggage from the international terminal and recheck it in the domestic terminal.
At Brisbane, the reverse, going back out through customs, picking up the bag, which luckily was one of the first. Then onto the transfer bus. This was a bit confusing as it turned out that the ground level is level 2. So I went up the escalators only to have to come back down. My ticket meant that I did not need to pay for this ride. A short wait after checking in at Brisbane. Then onto a bus. They announced that our cabin weight limit was 7kg, which caused me to wonder why. The bus zig-zagged through lots of dash-8 aircraft to the far side of the tarmac, where and Alliance Fokker F-100 was waiting. Some passengers questioned if this was the correct aircraft. They said yes. The normal aircraft was probably being serviced so Qantas Link had hired this one to fill in. A bit disappointing as I was looking forward to my first flight in a Dash-8, but then again, it was my first flight in a F-100. I have to say it was noisy and agricultural. More like a bit of farm machinery. I presume it had the lowest possible level of features. On the way I sat next to a couple from Rockhampton who had flown to the USA and were married in Las Vegas. We flew to Rockhampton and arrived on time. Sadly the bus timetable was such that the bus arrived after our flight, but left before we could pick up our luggage. So there were three of us who had to wait for the next bus, 1 hour later. While waiting I spied some bike boxes. Eventually I did catch the bus into town and camped in a caravan park. There were no on-site vans or cabins available.
