G'Day to All!

Well, it was a long trip!  Austin to Honolulu, non-stop 10.7 hours in an A330.  Staff on Board was fabulous.  No weather, no problems.  Spent the night at the Hale Koa, brought back a lot of great memories.  Dinner was fabulous, Short Ribs and Parmesan Potatoes.  Nice Argentinian Malbec.  Followed by a decent night's sleep.

As expected, was wide awake at 0300.  Breakfast at 0700 and a bit of waiting around for our afternoon Takeoff.  Interestingly, we had the exact same A330 for the Honolulu to Sydney run.  Takeoff was 1430 and while the planned flight line was only 10 hours and we arrived on time, it sure seemed like quite a longer trip.  Mostly because everybody, including Mrs J in the window seat, put down the blinds.  This former fighter pilot, likes to look out the window when I’m airborne.  EVEN OVER THE OCEAN! 

Alas, twas not to be.  

BORING!

Arrived in Sydney on time, in spite of clearing Customs with a bit of an oops!  Our passports had expired a couple of months ago. (According to Mrs J, they hadn’t technically expired, rather they were inside the 6 month window prior to expiration and could not be used. Sounds like expired to me.). Anyhow...Mrs J being the excellent staff officer she was/is had gone through the process to get new ones.  They arrived a few weeks ago.  She also went through the process of getting new Australian visas for the trip.

All went well, arrived in Sydney, went to baggage claim, got our bags, rendezvoused with our friends and proceeded to go through customs.  Being the acting travel agent for the group,  Mrs J went to the back of the line.  Being the baggage bearer for the gang, I was right behind her.  We get to the electronic "show your passport" kiosk.  All ahead go through,  Mrs J steps up, the machine beeps and directs her to the officer in the manned kiosk.  I step up to the machine, put in my passport and it beeps again, directing me to follow the leader.

We go over there, the officer, types on her computer, it beeps, she directs us to go sit "Over There!"  We follow orders, now is not the time to be belligerent.  About 10 minutes later (with the 6 other members of our group waiting for us in the Australia side of Customs), a customs officers comes by and insists we follow him.  We walk to the other end of the terminal where he directs us to sit down.  I've been sitting for the better part of 24 hours, I don't want to sit down.

However, I realize this is not the time nor place to not follow orders.  I sit down.

About 15 minutes later,  a different officer comes out with our passports.  He says we don't have valid visas.

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!

My master arm switch is turned on, AIM-7 selected and locked.  I'm ready to "take action".  Fortunately, Mrs J is WAY smarter than I.  She explains that we have brand new passports, less than a month or so.  She also says the Visa paperwork was presented to the Customs officer.

He agreed that they were shown, however, they did not match the dates that were in their files.  I start to stand up, yet am frozen in my seat by the stare from my wife.  

Yes, Dear!

She explained  that we had new passports and she had gone through the process to get visas and we had used the new passports to get them.  Sounds logical to me.  Our active passports and the visa's matched up with them.  

Sounds logical to me, but I'm not a bureaucrat.

Fortunately, the Aussie officer had a bit of logic also.  He said, he needed to go back and look at the record again, and would we take a seat and wait til he got back.  

Again, Mrs J gave me the silent signal for "Shut up and Color!"

A few minutes later, the officer returns and says "Well, that's strange!"  

I manage to get "How's that?" before Mrs. J can get a word in.

He says, that while our passports were valid, the visa's they had on file were from our last visit to Australia and therefore, didn't match our passport numbers they had on record.   Fortunately, Mrs J had the Visa paperwork handy, which had the issue date (with an issue date of a couple of weeks prior to our trip) on it.  She presented that to the officer.

Fortunately, the officer had a good personality, he let out a "Well, we screwed that up" and apologized for the delay.

The silver liner on this episode was, by the time Mrs. J and I got to Baggage Claim, the rest of the gang had rounded up baggage carts, pulled bags, loaded them on the carts and were waiting at the Baggage Claim exit.  

We walked out the door, our van was there waiting, we loaded up and went about our merry ways.  Managed to find our BnB and I did a front leaning face plant on the bed! 

Australia, we are here!

And...... *

 

* Apparently the owner of the BnB we're staying in has a similar sense of humor as I do.  Mrs J was "doing her business" when the roll of toilet paper ran out.  This was on the remaining tube.  She started laughing loud enough for me to need to investigate.  Both of us got a good laugh.  Gotta love the Aussies!