Diaries from Down Under

Chapter One

Wednesday, April 2nd (I think!), 2008

The entire concept of time is lost on me right now! I know that we left Tilbury for the Detroit airport at 1pm on Tuesday afternoon. We gained an hour arriving in Dallas. We gained another two hours arriving in Los Angeles. We are about to cross over the International Date Line somewhere and shortly there after, we’ll lose fifteen hours arriving in Sydney. On top of that, I still haven’t set my watch to daylight savings time! So, according to my calculations, it should be sometime around…October!!!!

As some of you may already know, I spent most of my childhood growing up around airplanes. My Dad spent his entire career working for Canadian Airlines and my uncle was, and still is, a pilot for Air Canada. With this being said, I’ve been flying the friendly skies for as long as I can remember. The funny is though, that while I had a great affection for airports and for flying, I never really liked traveling very much. Most of my time in the air was spent traveling between my home in Ottawa and my home in London…but beyond that, I never considered flight as anything more than a commute.

Both of my parents were desperate to see the world and had they had their way, their feet never would have touched the ground but as for myself, I’ve always been more like Beth…the middle daughter from the classic novel Little Women, who was forced to watch everyone come and go because she loved nothing more than to be at home.

I did travel quite a bit when I was young but even now, I don’t think that most people had any idea how anxious the idea of visiting a foreign country made me. Most of the time, I would quickly find myself able to adjust, at the very least, temporarily but, at other times, the anxiety of being away from home would make me physically ill. While most found traveling to be an adventure waiting to happen, I considered traveling to be a prison that bound me into unfamiliarity. Not knowing where I was or what was around me was terrifying to me, which in turn, made me feel extremely unsafe.

I’ve been thinking about all of these past feelings towards traveling as I sit on this plane that has another twelve hours to fly over the Pacific Ocean because, for some reason, that anxiety has dissipated. While there has certainly been stressed involved in preparing for our trip…I’m not in the least fearful of what my mental and emotional reaction to the travel may be. I think the difference is that a part of my heart is in Australia now and the biggest part of my heart is desperately trying to sleep in a cramped seat next to me.

Home is what used to be safe…now, it’s the smiling faces that either greet us at the airport or the loved ones that enduring pain staking layovers with you to get to that airport.

For better or for worse, the sky connects us all!





Thursday, April 3, 2008

We made it! We have made our way through the well-oiled machine that is Aussie Customs and we’ve never felt so tired in our entire lives! We managed about six hours of sporadic sleep on the flight and were determined to stay awake long enough to fall asleep with the sun. This, I can assure you, has been no easy feat! We are standing on our very last legs right now and at any second, our rapidly closing eyelids will bow down and admit defeat.

I have to say though, that if there is ever a city that can keep you entertained when you are running on fumes…Sydney Australia is that city! Sydney is FANTASTIC! We have spent the day walking around the harbour, admiring the Sydney Opera House from every angle and taking in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. So far, in our first eight hours here, I have fallen in love with this place.

The landscape of Sydney is phenomenal and I wish that there was anything I could say that would even remotely do it justice…but alas, I have only this…


…because as the saying goes…a picture says a thousand words and as our own new saying goes…jet lag gives us a thousand reasons to go to bed without dessert!!! It doesn’t happen often…but tonight I long for sweet dreams instead!