23 November 2024
Federal police questioning
Tokyo to Cairns on a Virgin 737
Now I am in Cairns, Australia. I have flown here on a tiny 737 death plane and made it.
I wont be able to do that again either as Virgin is no longer selling the Cairns to Tokyo flight, next time I will have to use Singapore airlines again or maybe ANA who are now the Virgin partner in Japan.
The flight was fine, I had a row to myself, but they turn the lights off too late and turn them back on again a full 2 hours before landing. That is a strange thing to do as there is no breakfast on offer.
Arriving in Cairns also has some advantages, my plane was tiny, I was at the front, and there were no other international flights arriving before mine, so I was first through customs, no lines at all unlike Japan, but then the fun started.
I still have to fly back to Melbourne (which is a 4 hour flight) but I had 2 hours to kill in Cairns. It was surprisingly not swelteringly hot outside so I walked around the airport for a while. I stopped at one point and took the photo below, through a fence, in a public area in the main car park. Next thing 2 federal police land cruisers come screaming around the corner, sirens blazing, skid to a halt and leap out and tell me to put my bag on the ground and step away from it.
They went through my whole bag and made me show them the photos I had taken... lots of hiking photos, pictures of ramen.
I showed them I still had Japanese yen in my wallet as I had just arrived from Japan. The best bit was 'how long have you been unemployed for?'. Strange assumption. I did ask what was going on and if this was a training drill, to which I was told to say nothing unless spoken to. So they take my license and go to their car for 5 minutes and come back and tell me to go, but to not take any more photos in the airport. So there you go, apparently taking photos in the airport car park is now illegal.
So on that exciting note, holiday over.
Here is the photo I took through the car park fence that caused the feds to have a panic attack. Good work guys, you got me.
And since one photo is not enough, here is the inside of the Cairns airport, I made the observation last time that it has a lot more shops and eating places than you would expect for such a small airport. I probably won't come back through Cairns again unless it is for work as it seems unlikely flights to where I want to go would ever connect through Cairns, it was a real rarity due to Virgin operating long haul flights with a tiny plane.
As always, a terrible boring photo as the last photo.