Lord Howe Island Trip - Day 8

Day 8 - 22/11/2015 - Departure Day :-(

We had to be out of the house and ready to leave by 9am.  Unfortunately, the weather hadn’t blown up so we did actually have to leave. We were secretly hoping that the weather would turn bad so that the flight was cancelled and would have to stay another couple of days.  The caretakers dropped us at the airport at about 9:15am.  There were so many people around as there was a flight that didn’t make it off the island in time the day before, so there were those people also trying to get on their flight, and a flight that was cancelled the day before from the mainland was also arriving.  There were people and planes going everywhere.  3 planes took off in the space of about 30minutes!

The last plane after the morning rush!

At checkin all of the luggage and passengers are weighed so they know exactly how much weight is going into the plane.  This is due to the short runway and needing to lift off as soon as possible.  Frequently passengers luggage might not make the same flight as them.  As our luggage was getting weighted the attended was pretty surprised.  I don’t know how we managed to do it but both of our backpacks weighed exactly 12kg each. Both of them too the gram - exactly the same!  Not too bad considering we didn’t have any scales like we did at home when we were packing to come over.  It was lucky we posted the 3 boxes back as the weight limit is 14kgs each.  As we were boarding the flight they told us that we were all under the weight limit so all of the luggage could fit on the flight and none had to be left behind.

Because of the short runway it wasn't like at other airports where they taxi up to the end of the runway, turn around, and then keep rolling and increasing the speed for take off.  With this runway they come to a complete stop, put on the handbrake, up the revs, release the brake and you rocket off.  A much more fun way of taking off!  I hope this video brings back some memories of the short runway for you Adam Johnston.  Again for those reading this by email you will have to go to the web site to view it.  Here is a link to the trip page and go to Day 8 from there. http://blog.sjbowden.com/p/lord-howe-island-2015.html

And here is one last photo of Ball's Pyramid in the background as we were climbing.  Ball's Pyramid is the worlds tallest sea stack.

Ball's Pyramid in the distance

We throughly enjoyed our time on Lord Howe Island and still didn’t get the time to do everything that we would have liked too do.  We will get back to Lord Howe Island at some point in time in the future!