First Australian Post!

Did I say I was a blog addict, or what? :) Here it is, only half an hour after arriving home and I'm at it already.

And what a trip it's been. We're safe and sound, but that took some doing.

For starters, I was half-awake most of the night before we left, so got up extra-early, finished off the things that needed doing, and by 7:45 we were off to the airport to book in well in advance for our 11:15 flight. Which we did - only to be informed it was now delayed, and would leave at 1:30! Toddled around, keeping ourselves amused the entire morning...

Anyone who has booked connecting flights knows what a delay like that can do when you have an in-transit other booking to run for. I managed to get hold of my brother to let my dad know we may miss our KL/Syd connection, and had been double-booked on one leaving at 8pm the next day (instead of 10am)just in case. When we were finally in the air, further delays threw the schedule even farther off, and that leg from Johannesburg to KL was spent anxiously watching the "expected time of arrival". I had obtained boarding passes before our first flight, so all that was needed was a mad rush to the boarding gate (in a strange airport) on arrival.

Fortunately, we arrived within an hour of the next one leaving, and managed to make sense of the many, constantly-scrolling screens of info at KL - to find our next flight parked right alongside the one we'd just exited. Thank goodness!

Oh, we'd booked window seats all the way, and it's just my luck that our row was the ONLY one on the plane whose window had been boarded up for cable space or something. DARN. Spent the flight craning my neck through other folk's windows.

So - Malaysia. Been there, done that, and all I can say is that it has a hell of a lot of palm trees and a too-quiet airport. And the sky is an overall shade of murky grey all the time. Sorry MC - perhaps there's more beyond the airport bounds and on better days! :)

Unfortunately, that long-haul trip from SAfrica to KL had started off a round of motion-sickness with my son. He started throwing up near the end of the flight, and carried on from there on out. He's currently got a well-positioned bucket next to his bed, and still hasn't had anything to eat or drink that will stay down today. 7 Airsick Bags and counting.... Hoping the {expensive here!} Coke bought on the way home will help.

Well, KL to Sydney boarded OK, then had ANOTHER wait while 5 other planes took off, and they looked for the inevitable missing passengers. We left half an hour late. THIS time I had a good view of where we were headed, and while my son dozed and hurled next to me I got a fantastic look at the shipping lanes between Singapore & Malaysia (anyone who says "pristine anything" within a hundred miles of those awful, polluting tankers is lying...), islands all the way down to Jakarta, and then the coast of Australia finally hove into sight, somewhere between Broome and some other godforsaken northern territory town. Port Headland perhaps? Something like that. Anyway, I was so eager to see the desert from the air. It's a place I've always wanted to visit, and my preview from above has got my feet all the more itchy to go exploring (with much water in reserve). However, after 1/2 an hour we came across a complete white-out of cloud, from ground to 38,000ft, which lasted the ENTIRE remainder of the trip! Funny, but it's epicentre was directly over Uluru, swirling in a gigantic circle. Perhaps the local gods didn't want me looking into their business? Who would have thought one cloud system could blank out an entire continent so completely...

We made it through customs and passports, only to find ourselves deserted at the airport, not a friendly face in sight. A quick call with my first Aussie 50c piece indicated dad & mom were just outside, dad having reckoned on a longer trip through immigration. We all piled into his fancy Ford (we're not in the third world no more!) and clung on for dear life as he sped and playfully side-swiped the other drivers all the way home - a hair-raising 25km. Perhaps I'm not used to the awfully-narrow, twisting Sydney roads, and have forgotten that dad's driving gets worse as his grey hairs increase, but it was an "exilirating" end to our cross-world adventure - this stage at least.

So here we are, ensconced in the parent's house, with towels and Ferrero Roche's waiting on our beds, Dory the galah remembering how nice I was to him, and FishBone the cat getting to know a new leg to lie on at night. Mom's hands are completely swollen and awfully painful from chemo, bruised and burned from the inside, but her test results seem to be cautiously OK. Dad's his usual self - straight in the front door to the TV to check on the cricket score. And J's feeling better.

Onwards and upwards! Sydney, here we come.