Always pack a spare pair of undies

I don’t usually travel light, feeling more comfortable taking a bit of extra stuff ‘just in case’, or some exercise gear in case I have the chance to fit some in. Sometimes, if I am only away over a night or two it’s a matter of throwing a bit of extra in the bag just to stop the other stuff floating around.

Twice I have carefully planned, making sure not to carry one unnecessary item. This is about those times.

The first was a planned weekend at Grassy Head on the NSW mid-north coast. This is on the coast about 10 kilometres off the Pacific Highway just south of Macksville. I had been invited by the North New South Wales Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to participate in a training weekend for Pathfinder leaders. The best way to describe Pathfinders for those unfamiliar with them is to say they are similar to scouts or guides. They are boys and girls aged 10 to 15 who dress up in a uniform, do crafts, drills, camps, abseiling, canoeing and the like. My job was to present in the area of safety and risk management.

Shortly after breakfast on the Sunday morning with the task completed I packed the car and headed for home. As I turned on to the highway the car ground to a stop. The NRMA attended, diagnosed the problem and arranged for the car to be taken to the nearest authorised repairer – the Holden dealer in Macksville. With the car parked safely in the car park I booked into the motel across the road and settled in to wait for the dealer to open in the morning.

Macksville is a picturesque little town. With nothing else to do I thought I would walk around and look at the sights. After about half an hour I had seen them all so I went around again – and again. This was a Sunday, and none of the shops were open. Things have changed of recent years.

Former Bank of NSW, Macksville

 Monday morning I was told by the mechanic that the needed part would have to come from Coffs Harbour. There was no guarantee it would turn up that day. So the next stop was the local clothes shop as, you should realise by this time, I had run out of clean undies. As it was, all turned out well. The part turned up, I hit the road around 4 pm, and ended up doing an extra night in a motel at Bulladella.

Sometime after that I was asked to go to Fiji. This was a fly out Monday fly back Friday trip, which meant I could fly direct to Suva and return without transiting through Nandi – things may have changed a little since then. This time I was participating in a teacher development program organised by the Church’s Education Department as well as doing a survey of Fulton College. I flew Air Pacific which, as I found out during the trip, was also known as Air Pathetic. Fortunately I had some reading for the trip so I did not have to watch the inflight movie – one of the early Harry Potters. As it worked out, I had ample opportunity to view this on the way home.

One thing I will always remember was the security check as Suva on arrival. One of the security officers took my biro, removed the refill, raised it to the light and peered into the cylinder. No doubt he had seen too many Maxwell Smart shows.

Now I had been to Fiji before so I knew what to expect – weatherwise at least. So again, no need to worry about cool weather stuff, so I had been careful to pack the bare minimum.

Friday morning, task accomplished, I turned up at Suva International Airport for the trip home accompanied by two work colleagues Don and Ingelese.  We did all the normal departure things, took our seats and the plane taxied out for take-off, only to turn around, taxi back to the terminal and shut down. ‘This doesn’t sound good’ I said to my travelling companion, a Fijian national.

Then came the announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a slight technical problem and are having it seen to’ – or words to that effect. We weren’t allowed off the plane as we had already been cleared out of the country. That wasn’t a problem as we were more comfortable in the air-conditioned cabin than we would have been in the unaired-conditioned terminal. For our entertainment they screened the in-flight movie – the same Harry Potter that I could have watched on the trip over – and for our comfort they served the in-flight meal. While I doubt that we are the only travellers to have enjoyed all this in-flight hospitality while sitting on the ground I suspect we are a rather elite group.

After some hours we were informed we would fly to Nadi so the necessary repair could be completed before flying to Sydney. Suva to Nadi is not a long flight so we were somewhat bemused when, just before we landed, we were told that we would be spending the night in Nadi as the crew was out of hours. We were duly herded into buses and taken to a motel of questionable standard. The next morning passengers were complaining of thin sheets, unchanged sheets, poor quality towels and general cleanliness. The Fijian national I was sitting next to on the flight home told me that she had phoned her husband the previous evening. He was dining with the owner of the motel so she gave him some customer feedback.

I spent a few minutes in my room unpacking a few things before I met Barry downstairs. With plenty of time to fill in we went for a long walk along the muddy streets. On our return to the motel Ingelese told us that the airline were trying to contact us as they could get us on a flight home that evening. Upstairs, throw everything back in the bag and off to the airport with great haste.

‘Sorry,’ they said. ‘You’re too late. We don’t know when we can get you home. There’s a flight coming through in the morning but it’s fully booked.’ Fortunately for us Barry proved a much more persuasive talker than I am. ‘Okay, we’ll get you on in the morning.’ And they did – no doubt at the expense of other longsuffering customers.

Saturday morning saw us winging our way to Sydney. For the second day in a row I got to enjoy Harry Potter, only this time I was wearing sweaty shorts, shirt and, yes, stale undies.

I felt sorry for Ingelese. Her family had arranged a child dedication at Church that morning after hours of negotiating with family members about a suitable date. As for me? Well, twice I have packed exactly what I felt I needed, and twice I have got caught. So now I always carry a spare pair of undies.