Day 1, time to pack and leave

October 26, 2024

Last night we walked into Civic, Canberra's centre, for the first night of the last Wharf Review. The Guardian described it with beauty "It’s time: the Wharf Revue is exiting the stage after 25 years of political piss-takes and satirical skewerings". We were home at 10:30 for a nightcap - port for Cora, tequila for me. It hardly occurred to me that I'll be leaving tomorrow. There'll be plenty to do, even a touch of beekeeping.

We were up before 6.30, had crepes for breakfast, baked a sourdough that we prepared yesterday and then I got cracking - grabbing things and ticking them off the list, last minute phone calls and even a bit of sewing.

It didn't take long to tick things off the list and to pack a bike box. I do find myself constantly bewildered by how little I seem to be taking. What a difference it makes to have no camping and cooking gear and no food. Will it make the hills of northern Indochine easier to climb? I doubt it.

With Cora, packed and ready to go. She'll be keeping the wheels of government moving whereas Winston and I will be rotating genuine wheels!

I have about three hours before leaving for the 3 pm bus to Sydney and 1030 flight that arrives in Hanoi at 1045 on Sunday, following a 4 h stopover in Guangzhou. That leaves plenty of time for figuring out how to cycle from the airport to old town, where I assume there's still accommodation, and to let people know that we're doing a blog.

But there's always those last minute things to grab and deciding where things should go. How does anyone do this weeks or even days before? My stuff woukd escape from the box and disappear!

In 2002, one of the last things we did was to pay our regards to our favourite magpie, The Vulture, whose home-range we share. She's still with us!

The Vulture - she turned up with no feathers on her head more than 22 years ago. She looks the same! I wish we did!

It's a beautiful evening in Sydney, as it was a glorious day in Canberra, where our solar knocked out 55 kWh - a drop in the ocean compared with my upcoming flight.

I made the most of the trip, contacting various friends and reading Andrew Leigh's "Battlers and Billionaires". Time flew and before soon I was dropped at the check-in with letters at the latter end of the alphabet. I wanted "A" so dragged my bike knowing that I was getting fitter while depriving the billionaire owners of the airport. They'll be battlers soon!

It was then time to stand in a queue going nowhere although check-in supposedly started an hour ago. All good! I then had a little glitch checking in because although I was under the baggage allowance, China Southern doesn't allow bags weighing more than 23 kg. Thus I had to get a pannier out. That's why you use ropes to tie boxes.

A little experience from cycling out of Sydney Airport combined with some inventive navigation, saw me sitting at the local rowers' club 20 minutes later watching fruit bats float by in dying light, drinking a schooner of pale ale and eating fish and chips - another whack in the guts for the airport.

I'm not the first to scramble down this embankment and squeeze through a fence. But I may have been one of the few to do so before an international flight.

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