The J's 2022 Get Away – Part 1

A repeat - for some reason FB didn't like the way I did the first post. So here it is again - apologies (but harder to do in FB....)

The J's - 2022 Get Away! Part 1

Starting our 2022 holidays at last – Canberra, Menindee, Canberra, Somewhere, Sydney, Perth, Train to Sydney and then north to Somewhere!

We left the coast late June to see the kids in Canberra, and importantly, so that Jo, her Dad (Les) and Rebecca could go to the 80th anniversary ceremony of the sinking of the Montavideo Maru. Les's brother was aboard when the ship was sunk by the US in 1942 with over 1000 Australian prisoners were aboard – it's a very sad story.

After some shopping in Canberra we headed out on the Sunday to Menindee to be a part of SES crew that has been looking after Menindee while the water comes down the Darling river from Queensland.

The days travel looked pretty good with a mid morning flight from Canberra to Sydney with the flight to Broken Hill around 1.30 in the afternoon to get to Broken Hill – from there we would be picked up by a current deployed SES member to get out to Menindee. As we all know the next East Coast Low was hitting Sydney on the same day.

We try to check-in – only to find that our flight was delayed with boarding happening after lunch. We did manage to get on an earlier flight (good) and then found our connecting flight had been rebooked to 6pm (bad). We did try to get back to the original time but that was too late (bad). In the meantime our new early flight got delayed (bad) which made our late second flight good with 6 hours in the airport (bad).

While waiting I rang the outgoing crew in Menindee to find out what was happening – and the good news was there was a white dual cab Toyota ute with a tray waiting in the carpark, unlocked and the keys would be "with the car" sitting in the airport carpark.

Eventually onto the plane from Canberra with the weather there looking good. After take off the pilot gave us the weather in Sydney (as they do). His version of the weather in Sydney was only that it was pretty gross" and would not add to it!