Dusty Sydney

There are many more things I want to tell you about our visit to Sydney, but those can wait for now. It's time to move on to the last part of our trip, which we spent in Perth, which is on the west coast of Australia in a state called Western Australia (fyi, Sydney is in New South Wales). You'll have 'heard' me mention my cousin Sharon quite a few times. She and her husband Tom live in Perth and, as we'd come this far to Australia and particularly as it was more or less on the way back home, Bill (bless him) suggested we drop in and meet Sharon in person. So we did.

Unfortunately, we were scheduled to fly out of Sydney on the 23rd of September. You may have heard about this freak dust storm.


At first the news was that flights would be cancelled, then that they were delayed, then that


they were as scheduled. The airlines didn't seem to know what they were doing, but we decided to


show up as normal, in spite of the fact that the view from Jane's window was anything but.



At first our flight was said to only be delayed by about 30 minutes ...then 1 hour...then 2...then 3 and then I forget. What with the check in time in front of the scheduled flight time, we spent 6 hours waiting in the airport, 5 hours on the flight and about an hour picking up luggage, car and driving to Sharon's house.

She'd given us sterling directions and a map so that was no problem. Our problem was that we'd had a very long, stressful day and were trashed. Fortunately, as Sharon later wrote, "it was very much a meeting of friends & not at all a meeting of strangers." Bless her, she gave us a cup of tea and sent us straight to bed.