Dusted Off

April 11, 2025

Getting Home

After a couple of days recovery, seeing an old friend and wandering around Hobart appreciating its quiet and watery views, it was time to fly home. Joel is staying in Hobart for a while longer with his wife who’s flying there from Canberra.

I found a bike shop which had disassembled and boxed my bike for a fee. And bought a suitcase for $7 from the Red Cross Op Shop. It was big enough to hold all my pannier contents as one checked-in piece of luggage for the flight home.

Of course, being a cycle tour there had to be a few wild cards. The adventure wasn’t quite over yet.

To ensure enough time to get to the airport, I woke up about 3am to find messages on my phone from Qantas that there had been two flight cancellations/rebookings. This didn’t make much difference until there was a third change. That would mean a long wait at Melbourne airport. And I’d need to depart Hobart on a slightly earlier flight.

A bigger problem was discovering (at 3:30am!) that the luggage storeroom key was faulty at the hostel accommodation where I was staying. It had worked the night before when I tested it.

This meant my boxed bike was inaccessible, and it was only about 30 mins before the booked taxi was due. Not a good situation.

Thankfully I found an emergency phone number for the night porter at the hostel. He awoke, sleepily appeared in the foyer, apologised for the key problem and liberated my boxed bike.

All good just as the taxi rolled up on time, and it was large enough to carry all the luggage including the boxed bike. All good that is until we arrived at the one river crossing which could get us to the airport on time. The mighty Tasman Bridge. To our surprise, it was temporarily blocked for reasons unknown.

So we joined a growing queue of traffic in the dark and hoped it would reopen in time to reach the flight on time. Boarding at 5:30am.

All’s well that ends well. The bridge was eventually cleared, the cab made it to the airport and I’m home, albeit about 6 hours later than scheduled. And the checked in luggage arrived as well.

The impressive back drop to Hobart. Mt Wellington.

My luggage. One carry-on pannier; one $7 suitcase with pannier contents; and the boxed bike.

I’d had no breakfast but I had coffee before the series of pre-dawn wildcards this morning.

The boxed bike weight. Just made it under the 23kg limit

The air tag worked as assurance. Despite the flight changes, the luggage didn’t get lost.

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