Red dust day

Wed Sept 24/09
I think we are ready to head back to Sydney. We drove 1691 klms and 104 litres of gas while here. We saw lots of N.Z. and all it's beauty. WE checked the luggage to make sure we didn't have any sharps in the carry on. Wendy paid the room and I sat the bags in the line up to load onto the shuttle bus. A short drive to the International and unload the bags. What's this our plane is cancelled. More than one plane is cancelled. We lined up anyway to get our boarding pass. Why no plane? Finally Wendy went to another desk and spoke to someone to get any infor she could. A Dust Storm has closed Sydney Airport and Harbour and all of down town Sydney. I find that hard to believe but anyway we get boarding passes to Brisbane and then we will go to Sydney from there. When we get to Brisbane we could see this red brown haze and lots of wind from the window. We landed, and then customs and then back onto another plane heading for Sydney. By the time we took to the air the sky was getting red. Almost 8000 feet when we flew out of the dirt. I'm sure Brisbane Airport was the next to close. When we got into Sydney there was red dirt everywhere and everything was dirty inside and out. They said we were lucky to get a place to park the jet as the airport was full and backed up people everywhere. We watched the news in our room then went for a nice supper. We did check on the internet if our plane to Canada was still booked. It was. Good night. DDT