Where, oh where has my little bag gone?

So on the trip out to Australia from LAX to Hamilton Island, Qantas loses my luggage.

I never thought they'd go for a twofer.

Still, the glum reality after flying from Sydney to Melbourne was that, in fact, my luggage was nowhere to be found. Sigh.

Melbourne was the first part of the trip where I rented a car. Driving on the left, yeah! Turns out the biggest adjustment was the fact that the turn signal and wipers were switched. So we're turning left are we? Wipe, wipe. Now a right turn? Wipe, wipe. We may not have signaled our intentions, but we had the cleanest windshield around.

We'd rented a car because we weren't going to stay in Melbourne right away. First we were headed out to Ballarat and the gold fields. Sydney experiences a gold rush in 1850, right after the California one, which had even more drastic effect on what was then still a colony. The population exploded but labor was short as everyone headed out to make their fortune. We headed out there to be tourists.

Much as I disliked Qantas losing my luggage so often, I had to admit they were top notch about getting it back to me, as they sent in out via bus to Ballarat that night, and then had a cab take it over to our motel. However, when my luggage had been returned, they forgot to take the errant tag off showing where it went. Turns out instead of going from Sydney to Melbourne, my luggage went to Ayers Rock Airport. It was just jumping the gun by a few days.