As you can see the trip was a bit stressful for us all.  We left PGH at 11:20 AM, flew to JFK and left there (after a 5 hour lay over) on a 6 hour fight  to LAX. 

 14 hours from LA to Sydney (that's our 747 above) - something I wouldn't recommend to anyone.  I did manage to sleep on and off, starting when it was 9:00 Melbourne time to get us on schedule.  It would have worked well if not for the young boy of about 10 in the seat next to me who keep shifting around and elbowing me, ploping his head against me unexpectedly and kicking me.  A polite young man when awake but a not much help when he was asleep.  We got through imigration ok and then only 4 of our 6 bags showed up. After some time trying to get some information about the baggage 2 - and only 2 - more bags poped out and they were ours. Of course we are now about an hour since landing we got to and through customs. The dog took his time sniffing all our bags but in the end he seemed to like us and let us go.  The delay didn't matter in the end since our flight from Sydney to Melbourne was cancled.

I have to say that flying through Sydney was one of the most confusing things I have ever done.  We were in the international arrival terminal and had to get our bags and transfer them to our next flight (which has been cancled of course) ourselves, and every person we asked how to do this told us a different story.  It seemed that the concensus was that we had to take our 6 cheked baggs and our 6 cary on bags onto a bus and find the terminal.  As we're standing outside the terminal looking at busses in horor at the thought of getting all these bags on to the bus we luckily spotted a sign indicating Qantas passangers should take the transfer bags through the next door.  There was a check in with very helpful people who had us booked on a new flight to Melbourne, checked our bags and put us on a shuttle to the next terminal.  This of course was a bus that was driving through hangars and around the runway.  We did get to the gate with time for G to face time friends back home and tell them he was sitting in Sydney Australia.  After all the time in the air a 1 hour fight to Melbourne seemed like nothing.