It seemed a bit of a waste to come all the way to Darwin and do nothing - but that's exactly what we did. We sat around the pool which was undercover almost in the carpark, definately no need for my Suntan Lotion that I bought, but at least the buying of the suntan lotion provided Mikaela with many hours of amusement - according to this teenager suntan lotion was such an old word! I think the inference was her mother is old and out of touch.
4pm came as did our bus for the airport, I'm sure the hotel was glad to see the back of us, if we asked them one more time if we could get into the room which stored our luggage I think they might have locked us in the room!
Darwin airport was certainly fun for Alexander. You have to visualise us moving through baggage check, we all have hand luggage and laptops, the laptops have to be removed from their bags and put into a separate container, the playstation and Wii which we had, at the last minute, stashed in Bella's hand luggage also had to be unpacked and Josh being ever so cautious, insists on removing his necklace just in case - so all in all it takes a while. Alexander's hand luggage was grabbed for a more thorough personal check - out comes a charger and they try again, but again its rejected. This happens a number of times with more and more things being removed as possibly being the offensive item that kept showing through on the x ray. At this point baggage check is getting more and more crowded as we act like a dam in their system - eventually there is nothing left in his bag but it was still going off - they then removed the bottom insert of the bag and found it - the offending item - a metal bookmark!!I won't say what was going through my mind but it certainly wasn't a bookmark. OK we're done Zander repacks his hand luggage, puts computers away and we move on, only for Zander to be requested for a drug swipe on him and his luggage - honestly next time he is on his own. All clear and finally we move towards customs and immigration.
More bag checking again, out come the laptops, the chargers, the Wii and the playstation all the hand luggage goes through - this time it's my turn to be knocked back - for of all things liquid in my luggage, out comes all the liquid things - foundation, creams, shampoos all into plastic bags, I even have to throw away anything over 100ml, including my suntan lotion. Finally we are all through laptops repacked, hand luggage repacked in my case and we can finally go to the gate, with Josh whining all the way that his laptop bag is too heavy, I guess it's been a long day. There is not much to do in Darwin airport with only one duty free shop and one cafe so we played UNO, yes UNO, and the children spent all our remaining Australian coins on junk food.
Finally our flight is called and we're off until I realise that my laptop is gone, my heart dropped, the only place I could possibly have left it was at the last customs check, my mind was racing wondering if I could possibly run back to the customs check to see if it was there. Then Matthew said "check Joshs bag" there it was - no wonder the poor kid thought his bag was heavy he had been carrying around his laptop and mine.
Finally we can say goodbye to Australia.
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