Singleton Beach > Perth
Part of the logic behind the decision to spend Friday night somewhere just south of Perth was an easy run into Perth to deliver the vehicle back to Bayswater by midday, and as it turned out, it's just as well. Had Hughesy made the same navigational mistake when we'd been really pushed for time the results could well have been, well, not disastrous as such, but certainly less than optimal.
Much of the confusion was related to the need to navigate round one-way streets and no right turns into a service station to fill the fuel tank and then get from there to Bayswater by midday. As it turned out, just leave the car in the car park on Saturday arvo looked a fair bit more secure than it sounded over the phone, but in any case we were back in time, the paperwork was concluded and we were left with twelve hours to kill before the Red Eye Express left Perth.
I would've been happy to find somewhere to sit quietly and scribble, and the fact that I'm tapping out this section of the travelogue close to a month later might be seen as justifying that point of view. Various illness and incidental instances have been part of the delay, but I was more than aware of the amount of backlog facing me after a fortnight away.
Madam, on the other hand, wanted to be out and about, and had unearthed the existence of the Citiplace Rest Centre where we could hire a $10 locker to stow the luggage while we set out for places that weren't totally specified but would certainly include Kings Park. While other cities may have similar facilities I've yet to identify them. I would have been quite happy to sit in the facilities at Citiplace and scribble away, but off we went, in search of lunch and nature photography.
We kicked around a couple of options, and could well, had Hughesy been more manipulative, have ended up lunching at Tom's Kitchen, but eventually found our way to the cafe at Kings Park, where lunch was late enough to push later mealtimes back so the evening meal, which might or might not materialise depending on the airport's catering arrangements) became less of an issue.
While Madam took herself around the landscape for the next two hours, I sat down and made as much progress on scrawling the backlog as time permitted. As sunset loomed on the horizon it was time to head back into the city, and once we'd reclaimed the luggage took a while taking it easy in Citiplace.
Faced with three options to get us out to the airport, we ended up going for the slowest.
Yes, a taxi might have got us out there quicker, but there would be time to kill to fill in the void before the check-in process was scheduled to start. Yes, we could have gone somewhere for dinner, but that late lunch then became a factor. After close to a fortnight of not quite gastronomic excess but certainly dietary intake far in excess of what happens at home I wasn't interested in pushing the envelope any further.
Alternatively, we could have rendezvoused with the airport shuttle, probably cheaper but raising the same dietary issues and adding the question of where to meet the shuttle. It's not like we could specify the front door of the hotel. The best option, as it turned out, was regular public transport, which involved a meandering ride through some of Perth's lesser socioeconomic zones. I'm not phrasing that as a put-down, more a comment that people who could afford not to live under the flight path would probably prefer not to, and those factors would be exacerbated by late night departures, though with practice you would presumably learn to sleep through it.
It's a couple of blocks between Citiplace and the relevant bus stops, and we set off through the gathering dark, arriving just after one bus had presumably departed, since it seemed like a good half-hour before the next one arrived. The trip itself was unremarkable, though had we been travelling another day at another time things may have been different. Seven-thirty on a Saturday night is not, as you may suspect, prime people moving time.
That still put us into Departures with close to two hours till checkin time, so the scribbling resumed, broken by an investigation into the coffee shop possibilities. That check revealed that the cooked items on the menu weren't available after six, so it was back to the scribble after that short break.
But, eventually, the appropriate times roll around, and with the luggage out of the way we made our way through Security with the almost inevitable questionable object identified in the carryon placed there by Madam (on the way out of Townsville it was a pair of scissors, in Perth two umbrellas). Equally predictably, she was selected for the random wand-wave for traces of explosive.
Upstairs in the Departure Lounge there was the chance to sneak in an ale, but at airport prices you're not going to kill time at the bar. In hindsight I probably should've gone two or three more as a sleeping draught, but there you go.