Travels with Qantas

A long overdue trip to see family in New Zealand brought me back to London Heathrow for my first longhaul flights since the pandemic on Wednesday.

In our past travels to NZ we included a stopover to break up the long journey, but when we arranged this trip a stopover still seemed risky with Covid-19 restrictions still in force – so we booked to go all the way through in one go. The gruelling three day trek ahead of us seemed incredibly daunting, having fallen well out of practice with this lark. I always marvel at anyone who can sleep their way through long haul trips as I definitely can’t!

Baggage tag for our three day trek to the southern hemisphere

Our travels NZ-wards were booked in the cheapest economy fares on offer from Qantas, but the price was still double what I would have expected to pay pre-pandemic. There are fewer airlines flying to NZ at the moment, all using planes with lower capacities, so prices are sky high. Our routing would also be less direct, taking us to Auckland via Singapore and Sydney.

The first leg of our travels took us on an A380, which has long been a favourite among economy fliers for its increased comfort levels. That said, the seat pitch in economy is an inch shorter on a Qantas A380 than on other airlines I have flown, such as Emirates and Singapore, which made a surprising difference to the comfort levels.

Boarding for QF2 started bang on time and for a moment I was hopeful of an on time departure. Those hopes faded when we settled into our seats. The cabin crew told us that while all the passengers were aboard, the pilots were not – they were stuck in traffic coming from central London (the effect of a tube strike). They casually rocked up just after 9pm and got their pre-flight checks underway. In the end we took off at 10:12, just over an hour and a half late, and landed in Singapore an hour and twelve minutes late.

Operations at Terminal 1 in Singapore seemed to be really efficient, with an air bridge attached very quickly. We disembarked and made our way over to the gate for our next flight, just ten minutes before the scheduled start of boarding for QF82 to Sydney. We could have stuck with QF2 which continues on to Sydney after a shortish stop in Singapore, but preferred to switch to the A330-300 which has a 2-4-2 seating layout in economy. Travelling as a couple those side pairs of seats with aisle access and window views are perfect. The in-flight entertainment system was surprisingly much better too!

Stunning views of the Parramatta at sunrise greeted us as Qantas Airbus A330-303 VH-QPI landed in Sydney

The A330 landed in Sydney around ten minutes early in the glorious first moments of sunrise after a wonderful view up the Parramatta River on our approach. In contrast, QF2 landed an hour and a half late. It felt good to be so close to our final destination, with just a short-ish hop across the Tasman. Oh, if only things were quite so simple…

Our final leg, on QF143, a very full Qantas 737-800, pushed back at a quarter to ten. Twenty five minutes later our pilots came onto the PA system and told us that we needed three sources of power to cross the Tasman, but unfortunately we had a problem with one of these, the auxiliary power. They would need to taxi back to the gate and get an engineer to come out and look at it. A nervous hour long wait followed, until an update from the flight deck reassured us that the engineers had almost fixed the problem. A bit more fuel was added and the crew requested a new flight plan.

We pushed back from gate for a second attempt and took off at 11:56, just over two hours late, but very relieved to be going at all. Although there had been a hope that they could make up a bit of time on the way over there was quite a bit of traffic on the way into Auckland and our pilot said they had been slowed down. Our plane had been given a slot to land at 16:55, so we were treated to a frustratingly slow approach and once on the ground we had a long wait for an airbridge to be connected.

Storm clouds greeted us in Auckland

The arrival procedure in Auckland had a final treat for weary passengers with a long winding queue to clear biosecurity screening. It’s an important protection against threats to the environment, but still your heart sinks when you see a multiple-lined chaotic queue like that. It took us almost an hour to clear.

A journey like this, crossing multiple timezones, always leaves me completely disoriented. A quick calculation shows that the total journey time from bag drop at Heathrow to walking out of the airport in Auckland worked out as 37 hours and 40 minutes. I was glad it was finally over and we could relax – at least, until we need to repeat the journey in reverse in just over a fortnight!

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Cockatoo Island

The highlight of our day trip to Australia was a visit to Cockatoo Island, a remarkable island in Sydney Harbour packed with a fascinating history that has seen it used as a prison, naval dockyard, industrial school and film set. The dockyard closed in 1991 but was opened to the public in 2007 following remediation work by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. Today, it is one of Sydney’s newer sights and clearly still one of its best kept secrets if its relatively low position in the Tripadvisor rankings is anything to go by.

Administrative Building ‘Brindabella’ (1930) forms the entrance to Cockatoo Island for arrivals by ferry

The island is just 21 minutes by ferry from the crowds and bustle of Circular Quay, yet we hardly saw a soul for most of our three hour long wander around the island. There is no charge for admission and maps are freely provided in the visitor centre, though you can rent an audio guide for a fuller experience. It’s a very photogenic place so a camera is a must, especially to capture the dark and brooding silhouettes of the restored cranes that you can find around the island.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of a visit to Cockatoo Island is that it has been left in a state of apparent industrial abandonment since its last use as a commercial dockyard. Although there has been plenty of demolition (around 50 buildings disappeared between 1991 and 2010), mass disposal of industrial machinery and site clean up you can still get some sense of the past life of the island as you wander the vast industrial turbine hall, machine shops and workshops thanks to the informative panels located throughout.

If my sense of imagination failed anywhere, it was at the slipways as I simply couldn’t fathom the scale of the ships that were being launched here until I saw some pictures in the excellent museum in Biloela House. Some of the largest vessels built in the world (in their time) were launched here, such as the 12,037 ton Empress of Australia and the 18,221 ton oiler HMAS Success. To be fair, my impressions might have been affected by the relatively small wooden vessel currently sitting on the slipway.

The mess hall in the convict precinct (c. 1847-51)

The upper level of the site holds the historic convict precinct. The first convicts, who arrived in 1839, were set to work constructing their own prison from sandstone quarried on the island. As galling as this may have seemed, it was preferable to the wooden boxes the convicts were locked in each night until the work was complete. The prison was soon home to the worst of the worst, a combination of hardened criminals and repeat offenders.

There are so many fascinating stories to be uncovered on the island, but my favourite would have to be about how the sheep on the island had come to learn that the four o’clock end of shift siren was the signal for the workers to go home. Apparently, the sheep would make their way down the steep steps from the top to raid the bins for goodies!

Today, Cockatoo Island offers a wonderful slice through the history of Sydney and Australia. It’s also an interesting place to stay (options include luxury camping and heritage houses) and an occasional film set (recent films shot here include Wolverine and Unbroken). I loved every minute of my time on the island and would recommend it to anyone looking for something a little different in Sydney.

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Twenty four hours in Australia

It is quite possible that I will only spend 24 hours in Australia in my entire life, so I figured that I would have to make the day count. Unfortunately, almost every museum and attraction was closed as we were visiting on Good Friday. At first I thought this was a disaster, but in fact it was the making of the trip as it forced me to look a little harder at the options.

I found three sights that made for a pretty splendid day in Sydney – a morning on Cockatoo Island, a walk through the Rocks to the Pylon lookout at midday and an afternoon walk around the coastal perimeter of the botanic gardens. The forecast was for a full day of cloud, but this luckily proved far too pessimistic.

The classic view of the Opera House from the Pylon Lookout

On our arrival by train from the airport last night we had seen the magnificent sight of the Harbour Bridge lit up. Up close in daylight it looked a little less romantic, mainly on account of the curved mesh fences, barbed wire and fumes from the passing traffic. However, as a feat of engineering it was indisputably impressive. I wouldn’t like to have been one of the workers on the bridge during its construction – the description of showers of molten metal that shredded overalls sounded quite terrifying.

The south east pylon of the bridge has been a tourist attraction since 1934, a couple of years after the bridge opened. It’s not hard to see the appeal when you step out onto the terrace at the top and take in the wonderful 360 degree view of the harbour, the bridge and the railway line that crosses it. In the past there were other attractions to draw visitors to this spot, including a roof top cattery that was home to a pair of white cats owned by the manager of the souvenir shop!

Our walk back through the mass of people gathered at Circular Quay and on to the Opera House looked like a bad move at first, but the crowds soon thinned as we entered the grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Our walk was broken up by the little visual treats of the gardens, like a fallen Dracaena draco tree and a nineteenth century replica of a Greek monument. It was quite lovely, especially with the bonus of sun. Plenty of folk were out sunbathing in the grounds.

On the whole it was quite relaxed – although a long queue had formed to get a photo in Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a seat carved from sandstone in 1811 by convicts for the then governor’s wife. It looked like a popular coach tour stop and a tick-box photo. No-one really seemed to be looking at, or appreciating, what they being photographed against!

HMAS Hobart (DDG 39)

On turning the corner a superb view of the naval base at Potts Point opened up, including two Royal Australian Navy destroyers HMAS Hobart (DDG 39) and HMAS Brisbane (DDG 41) plus the Canberra-class landing helicopter dock HMAS Adelaide (L01). There was another warship beyond, but I figured that I had already stretched my luck with a walk through the blazing sun to see this much!

The return walk took us back through the gardens with a brief stop off at an exhibition about Plants with bite in the Calyx. I squeamishly passed up on the opportunity to pay 5 dollars to feed a live cricket to one of the plants, but enjoyed the atmospheric display. Finally, our walk took us past Government House (usually open to visitors on Fridays, but not on Good Friday) and back towards Circular Quay.

Our 24 hours in Australia had come to an end. My travelling companion reckoned that was more than enough time to spend in the country, but if I never make it back this way I have at least seen a tiny bit of what the country has to offer and just how different it feels to New Zealand.

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