Total luggage for our 19 day trip. Two rolling duffels, backpack, and carry-on.

Okay, this is the last post related to the Australia trip and it has to do with a situation that we faced with luggage. It may get a bit confusing, but seriously, this is what we did. One of the cornerstones of the trip was diving the Great Barrier Reef, but as I mentioned in earlier posts, we chose to do the four-day trip as opposed to the full week. However, in order to do that, it included flying on a very small plane from Cairns to Lizard Island where we each could take only 35 pounds of luggage. That is what caused us to decide to take only our masks, snorkels, fins, and booties, and to rent the rest of our dive gear. With that decision made, we thought that we would see if we could manage the entire 19-day trip with only two pieces of checked luggage and two carry-on items.

Now, it does help that we were going to a warm climate, although we did carry rain jackets and I included a wrap while my husband just packed a couple of long sleeve shirts. This decision also meant we would be doing some laundry on the road, but when you compare that to what it costs for an extra piece of luggage on airlines these days, it seemed sensible.

We already knew that we would have to reconfigure for the flight from Cairns and we packed an old Army duffle to use for that purpose. What we didn’t know was that Qantas, the Australian airline we were flying for all internal flights, has a 7 kilo restriction for carry-on. That’s right – no more than about 15 pounds. So, for our first flight, we had to scramble a bit and yank my computer and some other stuff and put it in hubby’s backpack and a nice tote that the Qantas agent provided. That also meant we had to work out a configuration for each Qantas flight since we would be flying that multiple times. In other words, we reconfigured for the initial Qantas flight, reconfigured again for the dive boat part, reconfigured again for the subsequent Qantas flights and reconfigured again for the flight home. Even though we hadn’t planned to bring back many items, there were a few things and it did make for pretty constant juggling of how we packed. Even with that though, we did manage with the single rolling duffle and carry-on for each of us. Now, in all fairness to sister travelers, I’ll admit that part of why I could take so few clothes was that we were changing location every few days. My husband, like most men, didn’t care in the least that I wore the same thing repeatedly and it certainly cut down on what I carried.