We left Cleveland on Monday 16th July, heading out to Dallas, Texas for the first leg of our journey. This part of the flight was 2.5 hours as went without any incident. Our flight from Dallas was due to leave about 50 minutes after we landed, so it was going to be a bit of a rush as we had to pick up all of our bags and recheck them for the international leg of the flight. We hit Texas about 9:30pm and raced through the passport and bag checks, making it to the gate with about 20 minutes to go. Outside it was still about 37 degrees C but the airport was fine, except for the huge crowd at the gate. We waited for about an hour, until the flight was 45min late and then the captain came out to announce that there had been an air conditioning problem with the plane and it was currently 40 degrees C onboard, and they couldn't let us on until it cooled to under about 32 degrees. There was due to be another flight leaving about 11pm (after ours) back to Australia, but that was cancelled. It turned out that the Australia flight the day before had been cancelled and so the 11pm flight was to be for the people who had missed that flight. So, they had to stay in Dallas another night. Luckily our flight wasn't cancelled, but we eventually got on around midnight, 2 hours late.
The flight from Dallas to Sydney was not much fun. It is one of the longest continuous flights, clocking in at around 17 hours. I watched a few movies, but didn't get much sleep. Kris and the kids got a bit. We were originally due to catch a flight from Sydney to Adelaide at 9:30am when we arrived, but we didn't land until 10:30 due to the delay, so we were moved to a later flight, just after lunch. We were given vouchers for food by the airline, so we settled in for lunch and, having already passed customs, we just had to wait for the flight.
We got into Adelaide around 2pm and picked up our rental car. Work had provided us with a station wagon for a couple of weeks until we had a chance to sort out cars and we also had 5 days in a rental apartment on the beach at Moana while we sorted our house.
We dropped our bags off at the apartment, which had an awesome view of the beach, picked up our house keys from my Dad and checked out our house.
It was empty of furniture, our stuff was due to arrive the next day. It had been rented for almost 2.5 years and, while it was still standing and in reasonable condition, we did find a list 3 A4 pages long of things that needed work: the heater had seized up, there was a window glass pulled separate from the frame, some bad patch jobs on the walls, a toilet roll holder missing with the wall behind it half painted a different colour etc. Nothing disastrous, but it was enough to be a pain and ended up costing us around $2000 to fix it all up.
After checking the house, we headed back to the rental and had a slow afternoon and a good night sleep.
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| View of Port Noarlunga and South Port as we drove home |
The next morning we were up early and headed to our house, where our furniture from storage arrived at 9am. When we had left for Sweden the contents of our house were packed into storage, so it was almost like Christmas getting all of the stuff back. Our gear from Sweden was on a ship and still a month or so away, so it was good to have this stuff to start with.
My friend Daniel came and gave a hand sorting out the boxes and we began the daunting task of unpacking. For the next few days we spent the day at home unpacking and sorting, and the night sleeping at the apartment. By the third day, we had unpacked enough of the house that we finished up at the apartment and moved back home.
It was still almost another 2 weeks until we had everything unpacked. We'd landed on a Wednesday, the gear arrived on Thursday and the kids started back at school on the Monday. I took one extra week off of work to help Kris sort the furniture and to get the house settled, heading into work the following week.
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| The kids (and adults enjoyed eating pies again - but the savages forgot how to eat them properly! |
We also saw our first Aussie spider (albiet a tiny one) and did the customary trip to Ikea, where we spent way too much money on other bits of furniture we needed:
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| Our spider |
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| Daniel and Tomas proving that they are real at Ikea |
The second week, I headed down to my rugby club to try get some fitness back and catch up with the team. It was too late in the season to get into the team properly and I was way too unfit to play, but I ended up helping out the B-grade with some scrums and then ended up playing two half games:
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| Running (well more like plodding) on to the field |
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| Tackling |
(For the record we won both games convincingly and then the awesome B grade team went on to win the Premiership)
The next weekend we drove out to Camelot Castle (now called the Manor), which was where Kris and I had gotten married. They had cleared out the old chapel and were giving out the wedding plaques that had been put up in there. Kris and my plaque had been there, but unfortunately the place was closed, so we spent some time walking around and then decided to head back via Melba's chocolate factory:
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| Camelot / The Manor |
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| Camelot / The Manor |
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| The Chapel |
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| Melba's |
After Melba's we stopped at a bakery for a pie for lunch. While we were inside, the skies opened and it started bucketing down.
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| Rain |
The next weekend was Cameron's birthday, and my Dad and I took him to a football legends game - South Australia vs Victoria. The game was played by all of the players that were stars when I was Cameron's age (and hence are all old and retired now). SA ended up winning, and it was a fun night:
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| Grandy and Cameron |
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| Cameron and the Adelaide Crow mascot |
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| Tony Modra (#6) was the hero of the Crows when I was younger |
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| Andrew Jarman |
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| Graeme Cornes - Former Crows coach |
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| Cam's birthday |
The next weekend was the Royal Adelaide Show. We headed down on the Friday and the kids each had a budget that was made up of some money from us and some of their Birthday/Christmas money. They'd already worked out what rides and showbags they wanted. We arrived around midday and left around 7pm when the kids started getting tired:
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| Ferris Wheel |
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| Kids on the Fun House |
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| Dagwood Dogs for lunch (Kris and I had baked potatoes) |
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| Cam and the lolly teeth |
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| Cameron the bee in the flower exhibit |
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| Kris and the kids ride area |
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| Checking the budget and rides list |
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| Rides |
The South Aussie with Cossie stand had a free Clown game. The kids had to put balls in the clown's mouths and got points for where the balls fell. The first kid to get two 6s won a prize. Tom just stood there watching it, while the other kids raced to put ball in. Then he dropped two balls, both 6s. he won a giant inflatable ball.
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| 6 coming up |
Cameron and Alana were in the next race. I was still reeling over Tomas' performance when Cameron repeated it and dropped two 6s in a row. He also won a giant ball and we beat a hasty retreat from the stand before they checked up for cheating magnets or similar.
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| Cam's 6s |
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| Showbag hall |
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| Showbags! |
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| The sunset over the main oval was impressive as we headed off. |
All in all it's been a crazy few months. I am writing this on the 26th of September and we've been back just over two months. My Facebook reminds me that I was in Poland with the Old Boys this time last year, and that just over two months ago I was at Disney in Orlando. It sometimes feels like it was all a dream, as we've moved back into the same house and got back into the same routines we had before we left, everyone is just a few years older. Then I see the kids point at a travel show on TV and say "We've been there", or point at a house and say "That's like the one we saw in Tallinn" and it makes it all worthwhile. It was an amazing experience and we made some great friends who hopefully can come visit us in Australia or that we can return to visit.
While this blog is called Pupletts In Sweden, I will continue it with some of our travels around Australia as we now take the chance to explore another part of the world!
