First thing I did when I woke was to check on the internet whether my aircraft had departed Perth to come for us. The internet was broken. Fortunately it livened up again and the plane had a 10 minute delay.
Weather was cloudy and drizzly. I filled up the car (1/3 empty) for AUD44. Must have had a bloody big tank as the price was only AUD2.22 per litre. Check-in at the airport went smoothly but things got less certain afterwards.
The weather didn’t look too bad for the incoming aircraft until around arrival time when fine misty rain set in. It cleared eventually and the aircraft landed an hour later on our scheduled departure time; it had circled for 45 minutes. I was relieved that I’d be getting out of this expensive and remote location. I certainly didn’t want to be stuck here for another couple of days.
We managed to leave only 45 minutes late and it was looking unlikely I’d catch my connecting flight to Auckland. Considering all the things that could have gone wrong this trip with the unreliable Cocos/Christmas flights, I’ve done very well.
By the way, most accommodation here are prepaid with no refunds due to flight cancellations. I bet the hoteliers love flight cancellations as they keep the money from the people who didn’t arrive but charge the people who have to stay longer.
There was a former inmate on my flight. Some of the passengers, presumably, the detention centre workers recognised him and congratulated him on his successful appeal and ability to remain in Australia. It was good to see that hardened guards treating him as a person still.
The flight was uneventful and we landed in Perth about 45 minutes late, meaning that there was no chance I would make my connection to Auckland. Nevertheless I’ve never been so happy to be in mainland Australia. Long queues at immigration due to under-staffing led to a very slow exit. What a bugger that my delay and this queue occurred when I needed to make a connection; my previous three arrivals have been super-swift.
I took the bus into town for dinner and to kill some time. I had some time to think about how lucky I had been with standby travel from Perth to Cocos (Keeling) and back, and then Perth to Christmas Island and back too. This had been all at a fraction of the commercial price of over AUD1100 return for each of the destinations, meaning a total of around AUD2300 for the four flights!
This trip would have been prohibitive commercially. And then there was the flight from Auckland to Perth return as well, on standby.