Hopefully we now get to find out where he/she stayed.
He!
Would you believe, I was in the process of creating it. Home after 24 hours, door to door. Longer than getting to London.
So, to set the context, I was flying from HIR/BNE with a connecting QF flight to Sydney.
The QF flight out of Honiara has been known to be extremely late although recently it seems OK. My daughter who is posted there has twice been stuck in BNE earlier this year (QF provided hotel) because of a late departure, thus missing the connection. But recently, this flight has been pretty good and in the last week there have been 3 (including ours) early departures by about 20-30m. Despite this we still arrived 10m late into BNE at about 1840 but fortunately had plenty of time for what was an incredibly smooth transit to the Sydney flight.
So the key issue was whether I could book at the last minute and where to stay. I was very close to booking the IBIS but, after having already travelled (from leaving house) 9 hours, the last thing I felt like was walking around to the hotel.
@AustraliaPoochie - I think you also raised Rydges and that is where I ended up - for more $ but for simplicity it came up trumps. Here's why.
My onward journey was a bus to the south coast of NSW leaving at 0930. I could hop down to the station (about $7 or 8) and be at the international terminal in 10m. In the end, it was all about simplicity.
As a member I could get in for $206 and the bus was over the road.
I am so glad I did. It was so simple.
Thanks so much for the help. I really would not have got there without it.