Don't you just love travel?

I have flown to Brisbane to spend a week socialising with friends and spending some time at the Brisbane International (a tennis tournament leading up to the Australian Open).

I tend to set out early for these trips. A life long obsession bred into me by my parents to be punctual and conversely not to be late.

Just as well this time. I arrived at Qantas' Sydney Domestic Terminal to be find queues of passengers snaking around every section of the terminal. It wasn't the end of holidays travel causing the crowd, although that wouldn't have helped. Apparently a breakdown in the automated 'baggage drop' system was to blame. Checkin staff were processing baggage checkin the old fashioned way; i.e. humans doing the work from a behind a desk. Only five humans too, whereas even in the olden days there would be dozens of them at peak periods.

This was my position as I joined the end of the queue.

You see the guy in the black clothing with his left hand on his waist? Well, 35 minutes after I joined them in this queue, he and his two mates decided to move to a parallel queue adjacent to us. After a wait of 50 minutes I reached the head of our queue and checked my bag but those three were still in the parallel queue at the same point where they left ours. For once, I was a queue winner.

My plane departed on time despite the baggage issues. I'm pleased to report that my bag arrived in Brisbane on the flight.