Transit

I equate the airport before 9 a.m. on any given weekday akin to that John Brack painting, Collins Street, 5 p.m. 

Gone are the pork pie and fedora hats, only to be replaced by black suits, crisp white shirts and work trainers, the ones that don't see the outside other than footpaths between work and the station. Briefcases are now laptop bags and back packs. Nobody speaks to one another, unless they are colleagues, or the odd family who has strayed onto one of these early flights. They stick out like a pimple on a pumpkin. 

I was one of these people this morning, as I stumbled off the red-eye from Darwin at 6.45 this morning. I was in my best Melbourne summer black. A loose black t-shirt and a pair of black, wide-legged linen trousers, my feet in Birkenstocks. My white trainers were in my suitcase, hopefully making it onto my next flight. This felt a little incongruous, as I left Darwin, where it was 30 degrees and muggy at midnight, while Sydney was an overcast, damp 15 degrees.  

You see, Qantas, in their infinite wisdom, have fucked up the flights to Melbourne. Gone is the wet season red eye direct back from Melbourne - instead their only direct flights are during the day (which doesn't fit with work) or there are flights that leave after work, but it means getting home around 1 a.m. My only other option was to do the double hop and pop in at Sydney for 45 minutes to change planes. 

It's strange being back in a place that I once knew so intimately. At one stage I was up there once a month. They're trying to gentrify the place. Gone is the redundant travellator. The shops are now more high-end. The post office has gone, replaced by yet another glitzy boutique. The food concessions remain tragic filled with underwhelming brown food. The Krispy Kreme shop always has a queue in front of it. I've no idea why. The Victoria's Secret shop has gone, replaced with a high end perfumerie. There appears to be two Mecca Cosmeticas. And there's the book shop, which sells more than just airport novels. 

It's the high-end nature of the shops that puts me off a bit. Really, at 7 am, the terminal is just a glorified bus or train station. Part of me wishes there was a better, less expensive convenience shop. (There is a good one in Darwin, but its expensive, and the only thing open at midnight other than the bar). 

Like the Melbourne Qantas terminal, there's plenty of building work around the place. Lots of wooden screens hiding a multitude of sins. We'll see what comes of it.

Then it comes time to board the plane. It's ten past seven. There are no announcements. They just open the gates and the black clad, backpack sporting people silently made their way onto the plane in an orderly fashion, just as if they were catching a bus or a train. 

It's a bit different to the 8 p.m. regular flight to Darwin which has been dubbed the FIFO Express. These flights are just shuttles for business people, like myself, to get from city to city. 

The romance of air travel has gone. 

Today's song: