Home... unlike my luggage

In the morning Greg took me to the airport, which was greatly appreciated. Then I checked in and sat around waiting for a while until our plane to Helsinki left one hour later than scheduled due to heavy fog around Heathrow. This had me a bit concerned as I was worried about missing the connecting Finnair flight from Helsinki to Hong Kong. Thankfully, the airplane made it on time and we were able to board the Hong Kong bound flight, even though it was delayed a little while because they had to finish loading luggage... presumably from our flight.

I arrived at Hong Kong a little nervous about whether my luggage would be properly transfered across from the Finnair flight to the Qantas flight back to Melbourne. My anxiousness was justified when the little bip that happened as my boarding pass was swiped indicated that my luggage could not be found and would not be getting on the flight with me. I was not alone in this predicament because there was also an Aussie girl who lives in London called Suzanne who had been on exactly the same flights as me, whose luggage had also yet to be found.

Neither or us were particularly pleased about this incompetence, but neither of us had much option other than to get on board and hope the airlines would get us back our luggage as soon as possible. The thought of the missing luggage plagued my mind throughout the eight hour journey to Melbourne and made me far tetchier than I normally am. It didn't help either that I was sitting next to a blobcake whose thunder-thighs kept squashing through to my seat, and whose tuckshop arms kept flabbing over the arm rest.

With an hour to go on the flight, my thoughts slowly turned to happy ones about seeing my family, but this happiness should have started a lot earlier. Arriving at Tullamarine we had to go through customs at which time Suzanne and myself both reported our luggage missing at the Baggage Services desk. Going through customs with my duty free, I was asked what food I was declaring on my return, and I said it was just some British confectionery but that someone had managed to lose my luggage in transit so I didn't actually have it with me.

Finally I escaped the gloom of customs and was greeting by a lovely little boy running towards me saying, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!". It was great to see Bennett and Stephanie again after such a long time, but the quest to get my luggage back continued. There's some things in there that are really valuable to me, including a whole lot of Carter and related t-shirts (most long out of print), most of the CDs I bought while I was away, the presents I got for Stephanie and Bennett, the Hibs clothing that Scott's family had given me, my dufflecoat, electrical things like batteries, chargers, cords, converters, as well as all the boring things like socks, spare shoes and so on.

That was Tuesday night and it's now Thursday morning. I'm still no wiser as to where on Earth my luggage is or where it got lost. The man I spoke to yesterday at Baggage Services is guessing that it got lost somewhere back at Heathrow, and that they might just simply retag it for Melbourne without bothering to put it onto the online tracking system and have it in transit for yesterday's flights to Melbourne. In which case it could have arrived in Melbourne last night and baggage services might therefore process it this morning and call me to organise delivery. However this hasn't happened yet, I'm not optimistic and it's still not even identified as having been located on the online tracking system. I was told that if I hadn't heard anything by midday today that I should give them a call... and I will definitely do that. Whilst I can feel sorry for myself, I feel sorry for Suzanne who is actually here in holiday and doesn't have any of her clothes with her and doesn't have travel insurance... at least I've got all the stuff I have here at home. (Yes, I have travel insurance - I'm hoping not to need it).

It's a real downer after such a brilliant trip and hoping that I'll get my bag back over the next few days is eating into my plans for the weekend, where I was hoping to be able to get down to Phillip Island for my cousin's 21st birthday party. Unfortunately, until this is sorted I know I wouldn't be able to relax about it, and I don't want to be somewhere where I don't want Qantas to deliver my stuff.

All in all though, a great trip, and once I get the cord back to connect the digital camera with the computer, I'll pop up a few random pictures, including one I took of the Helsinki landscape as we were coming into land.