Jim Eagles: Past use-by dateline

The International Dateline can cause all manner of holiday headaches. Photo / Getty Images

If it's Tuesday, this must be Tonga. Or maybe it's New Zealand... Or is it Wednesday? Oh dear...

I'm thinking of getting up a petition to have the International Dateline abolished on the grounds that it causes unnecessary pain and stress to innocent holidaymakers.

I didn't always feel that way. In fact, I used to rather like the dateline. It sometimes allowed me to arrive at my destination the day before I left, which felt as though I was getting a bonus day (yes, I knew I would lose the day at the end, but it still felt like a great start).

But I've changed my mind since organising a family trip - daughters, sons-in-law and grandkids - to Rarotonga to celebrate two major birthdays.

Because it was a complicated exercise, with participants coming from Auckland, Tauranga, Central Queensland and China, I didn't try to make the bookings myself but went to a travel agent.

At first, all seemed to go well, though I did find it difficult to follow the itinerary the agent provided. Our flights, as often seems to be the case when you're visiting a Pacific island, left at night so on the outward leg we would arrive the morning of the day we left. And on the return flight we would arrive early in the morning two days after our flight took off. Somehow, instead of seeming pretty cool, it was very confusing.

Then Virgin Australia added to the confusion by altering the times of some flights between Auckland and Rarotonga, which meant we had to arrange different connecting flights for the mob from Australia.

They ended up having to come over a day earlier and spend the night at a hotel at Auckland Airport in order to catch a flight which would get them to Rarotonga the same day as they left their home in Gladstone (yes, I know, it's better not to think about it).

The new flights meant we would land in Rarotonga 50 minutes after midnight and for some reason led me to query what time we might get into our accommodation which had, of course, been booked for the day we arrived (which was, you will recall, both the next day and the same day as we left home).

Just as well I did. Our travel agent reported that the units would be available at noon. Well, can you imagine arriving with a bunch of tired kids just after midnight and then sitting round in the garden for about 10 hours before getting into a room? Quite. So we booked our units for an extra day.

That led me to also question when we would have to vacate our accommodation on the last day. Sure enough we'd have to move out at 11am. But our flight would not be leaving until just after 11pm. That sounded like a recipe for a grumpy ending.

The only solution, it seemed, was to keep the biggest unit until the next day, even though by the time that day actually arrives we'll be approaching Auckland Airport two days later ... or will we?

I think we've got everything sorted now but just thinking about it has done my head in and I remain nervous about arriving at the airport to find the flights left two days before or reaching Rarotonga and discovering that our accommodation was booked for the middle of next week.

I need a lie-down and a restful holiday and fortunately Rarotonga sounds like the perfect place.

The petition can wait until we get back home ... whatever day that is.

Jim Eagles is a former editor of Herald Travel