Man Told Carry-On Is 2kg Overweight Despite Being On Same Flight As 100 Broncos Supporters

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A local man headed home after a long weekend of seeing family in Sydney is seeing red, or maroon rather, after being told that his carry-on bag is slightly overweight.

The oversight will cost Mike Rayner, a Betoota Heights-based systems engineer at the South Betoota Polytechnic College, about $50 and add some sting to what has otherwise been a rather unpleasant time in the nation’s biggest open-air sewer.

Rayner could be heard cursing softly but politely, out of earshit of any women, before tapping his orange ING card on the terminal. He shared a resigned glance at the check-in staffer, as if to say either a pensive ‘Fuck You’ or a knowing ‘You’re only doing your job’ sigh.

With his 10kg carry-on following behind, Rayner told The Advocate a short time ago that he stopped on his way to the gate to have what he described as a “large piss” and “bowel movement” after a morning coffee.

“That [release of body waste] alone would’ve been two kilos,” he said.

“But what I saw at the gate made me realise it’s all just a scam. It’s all just designed to rip you off.”

Sitting at Gate 59 inside Terminal 2 at Kingsford-Smith was roughly 15 metric tonnes of Broncos fan.

At first, Rayner said he could only laugh.

“I should’ve known better than to book the cheap flights after an NRL Grand Final. I should’ve just booked direct back to Betoota-Remienko,” he said.

“For fucks sake.”

The scene that Rayner described was one of sheer amazement.

There was “at least” a hundred of them, Broncos supporters in varying stages of collaps. Some eating, some digesting, most thinking about both. The 35-year-old said it’d been a while since he’d seen a group of humans like this. That he wasn’t used to it. That it was familiar but alien all the same. Such heft. The sheer, ungovernable heft of them, inverted on his retinas, shimmering under the fluorescent lights like a mirage of Queensland itself. Bloated, sunburnt, undefeated. The fifteen tonnes remark, he said, was just a throwaway line, but as he sat there doing the sums in his head, doubt began to creep in.

Could a late-model A320, even at full thrust and flap, hope to lift this living monument of hope and heartbreak off the ground? Would it need the full length of that north–south runway, the one they lengthended especially to be an emergency option for a returning Space Shuttle? He pictured the aircraft gathering itself, trembling at the edge of physics, jet engines screaming as if praying desperately in the final moments of life.

Inside he can see and smell it already. The scent of Big Arch Burgers escaping at both ends and rum breath. There’s already a queue for the shitters. Some without lasting intestinal peace just help themselves to the business class toilet, shooting a puce-coloured stripe down the side of the plastic bowl, leaving without brushing. Gleeful. Take that, rich bastards. Some have taken their shoes on. He’s sat on the aisle, he’s constantly bumped and knocked by what he can only describe as mass.

Rayner watched, and for a moment, forgot about the fifty bucks, the bag, and the scam. For a moment, he felt something close to pity, or perhaps to love, the kind you feel for a state you can’t quite leave behind. Then they called his boarding group, and he followed them down the swaying aerobridge into the bright, terrible unknown.

More to come.