Welcome to Australia!
Shaina and family landed in MEL this morning, so we were up at about 6am to make the drive in to get them. We got into Melbourne mostly uneventfully, managed to find parking, then over to the international arrivals lounge to hurry up and wait. They took an excruciatingly long time to clear customs, which drove our anxiety into overload thinking they’ll be turned away for some reason or another - but it turned out the airline simply misplaced one of their bags. After two hours they cleared customs with the airline taking down Sabriena’s details to arrange delivery of it (which they did, on the third day they were here, poor driver had to spend the entire day going out to Horsham and back, hope he liked driving!).
A pleasant morning walk back through the parking garage (where it’s always cold) and we were underway. We then stopped at Rockbank for the requisite McDonalds coffee that’s something of a tradition now, and that’s where the full impact of the temperature started to sink in. It wasn’t even that hot, only getting to about 37 degrees celsius, but they just came from winter, sat in an air-conditioned van, and I don’t know how to explain it but the sun just hits different out here.
We stopped in Dadswell’s bridge for another “leg stretch”, and had a look at the “giant koala” which we’ve never stopped at before, where everyone got their first taste of the second most-noticeable part of Australian summer: the flies. Sabriena found this incredibly amusing.
Anyway, we made it home, with Tiabeanie so terribly happy to see us she seemingly just accepted that the pack has grown by four, yes yes, very good.
Update: 2024-12-16: Today was much hotter, 44C. We didn’t do much.
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