Sadly, today is our final day. Instead of going to bed early, I worked on the diary until 11pm last night, so when my alarm goes off at 4.15am I'm not terribly awake. I creep downstairs quietly to gather our belongings and pack, but my stealth is ruined when the burglar alarm flashes and I have to wake John in a panic in case I've set it off. Thankfully I haven't, but now everyone is awake. We leave for the airport at 5am for an 8.30am flight to Sydney. We can spend the afternoon in Sydney before we leave for Japan tomorrow morning.

[Someone didn't think this through]

Check-in is extremely slow. Although we're travelling within Australia, our plane continues onto Osaka so we have to check in at the International Terminal. After the recent security scare, they're x-raying baggage at check-in, and making people remove aerosols. As you can imagine, most people have packed them carefully away in their baggage. We locate two cans, which are checked to be genuine, and replaced. Utterly pointless - what can we stow in an aerosol can in the hold that's going to cause problems mid-flight?

Having queued for 45 minutes, we're then checked onto the wrong plane (travelling onto Japan tonight), which is hastily rectified when we complain. I sleep in the airport while Iain reads. We've got three days in a row of three-hour check-ins.

[Staff "fix" the engine]

Boarding is a few minutes late, then when 200 people are settled, the plane is held at the gate, with a problem. There's a two-hour delay, due to a crack in the engine. Iain and I are not convinced that they'll fix and replace this successfully in two hours.

We're "deplaned" and queue for transit passes. Since we were near the back of a 747, this entails another hour's wait. Then we queue again for food vouchers which reduce the price of breakfast to merely expensive.

We sit, bored, and await news. I occasionally go to the information desk but they never have any. At 11am (we've now been in the airport over 5 hours) the departure board shifts our leaving time to 2pm. I head for the desk to request an alternative flight to Sydney. We're told to wait and someone will deal with us - another couple of English-speaking people, bound only for Sydney, do the same. Whilst we're waiting, an announcement is made in Japanese, and 200 Japanese run towards our gate. The staff at the "information" desk have no idea what's going on. We're told to follow the Japanese, then we're told to come back to the information desk. By this time we're not amused. There are 100 people, mostly Japanese, crowding the desk, and one guy trying to deal with people individually. People are being checked onto different flights to Sydney. Someone else arrives, and gives an announcement in Japanese. A few English-speakers look confused. This is enough for me, and I make my own announcement - requesting information in English, and more than one person helping us all.

Finally something works, and a staff member is assigned to the 9 non-Japanese passengers and takes us back through security for the third time, to the Domestic Terminal. As we await the train, we see the kerbside where John and Pam dropped us six hours ago. We now have no tickets, no boarding passes, no seats, but we do have our luggage back.

[Moreton Bay]

[The Great Dividing Range]

Unfortunately for us, possibly due to many Japanese transferring flights while we make our way to Domestic, there are no seats available for another three hours. We're flying with Qantas at 2.30pm. Once again we wait. I manage to sleep for an hour, but this broken sleeping pattern is making me feel ill. Iain's exhausted.

We eventually arrive in Sydney at 4.30pm, six hours late. This may not sound so bad, but it's wrecked our last day. Incensed, we lug our baggage to Sydney's International terminal, hoping to delay our connection to Japan by a day. According to the Information desk, the JAL staff are in hiding - our original plane still hasn't arrived, 400 people are extremely fed up, and it's not due for hours.

We find their office. Closed. We phone their reservation line. Closed. I phone all their numbers until one system puts me on hold. I eventually reach a human, and within two minutes he politely transfers our flights, free of charge, and assures us this will be fine.

It's now 6pm as we head into Sydney towards the YHA we booked six weeks ago. It's odd to arrive somewhere familiar, but also reassuring. We're fed up, annoyed, and tired. Without the energy to leave the hostel we eat and spod there. Thankfully we've got a whole day in Sydney tomorrow, but it's cost us a day in the UK. JAL airport staff have a lot to answer for - at least a dozen flights left for Sydney whilst we were being messed around and misinformed.