Madness before we even left

Jack and I went to the Gold Coast to visit my parents on Thursday 11th December. The plan was to fly in at around 8am and fly out again at 6pm. It was a flying visit, but the best we could manage with our busy schedule prior to leaving Newcastle and heading off to Hong Kong.

We had a great day with mum and dad, hanging out at their house and doing a little bit of shopping. We went to Red Rooster for lunch and Jack got to play on the play equipment there. It was really nice to spend some time with mum and dad and it was great for them to see Jack again after about 6 months.

Just before we were due to leave for the airport an electrical storm hit the Gold Coast. Upon our arrival at the airport we heard that some of the aircraft heading for the Gold Coast had been diverted to Brisbane due to low cloud cover and there was even a report of a plane being hit by lightning. I'm not sure how common or serious this is. Jack and I sat and ate and kept our eye on the departures/arrivals board. Our plane had been delayed by about 20 minutes but they expected the flight to go ahead. About an hour after we were supposed to leave they made an announcement that our flight had been cancelled. This was a huge pain as we were due to fly out from Sydney at 11.50am the following day, and we needed to check in our luggage 2 hours before this.
After playing the sympathy card we managed to secure a place on the first flight to Sydney the following day. There were no problems with this flight and Jack and I arrived at the International Terminal at about 9am, with only 50 minutes to spare. It was not the way I had hoped to spend our final day in Sydney before flying out and both Jack and I were utterly exhausted before we even got onto the International Flight.