Look who I found...

Good morning all,

For a bright and early flight, I have once again returned to Melbourne Airport – the sixth time this trip – and write to you while in the air to Perth and starting a new adventure on the West Coast of Australia.

After a week spent burrowed in the local library and sweating beyond measure with daily Bikram Yoga classes, I took the shuttle to Melbourne Airport and came across a rather familiar face…

For those of you who don’t recognise that girl squeezing me, it is Miss Sophie Wotton and she’ll be joining us for the next month of adventures. From what started as a drunken “come join me in Oz” a few weeks before leaving, albeit with a slight delay to earn the necessary funds, I received a call from Sophs just after New Years to let me know she would in fact be joining me  - and I have been immensely excited ever since. She arrived Sunday evening and it has been lovely to hear all the news of home and hear so much of all that I’ve missed – and you all have been sorely missed.

So, last Sunday evening, after having spent the day finalising visa forms and job applications, I took a shuttle to Melbourne Airport and waited in expectancy for her arrival. Melbourne Airport and I think I’m quite an authority to remark on it, given my many visits, has one or two major faults. One of those is its arrival area. For those of you who haven’t yet visited Australia, let me tell you that you’re yet to experience the rigours of passport control and immigration checks ‘til you do. With landing cards and passport control, you’re then sent through for an interview and asked to unpack your bag explaining each item and to convince the staff on duty that you’re not out to infect, terrorize or abuse the population of Australia, which dwell a few hundred yards beyond a further series of x-ray scanners. The process  I understand has its purpose but with the many layers of immigration and interview stands, the once neat queue of visitors quickly becomes a wide spread of people and things. Once completed and approved, you’re then asked to leave through the nearest door, of which there are many and this is precisely where my major fault with Australia Immigration Authority lies.

Welcoming friends and family at the airport is a wonderful experience. Even without a T-mobile fanfare greeting, one can’t help but be excited by it all and as you look at the many expectant parents, grandparents, siblings, partners and friends, you can see they are all dancing and singing inside, waiting with wide smiles and giddy grins. I was very much one of those in wait and with the added addition of my first coffee in a month, arrived at the arrivals lounge with grin to rival any of my counterparts and my fingers trembling in anticipation. So, given that nearly all of those waiting were in a similar state of excitement, searching among the incoming crowds for one we could wave to madly and coocoo their name in a loudness otherwise unacceptable in other surroundings, I was deeply unimpressed to find that in addition to searching among the incoming hordes for Sophie, I also had to switch my focus between the four doors spread along the 100-metre stretch of immigration. In what played out as a one hour and ten minute tennis match of turning my head back and forth, at a rate of one turn to every two to three seconds, my level of excitement and anticipation grew to a point near eruption….And then, walking through the fourth exit, clad fully in backpacker attire, I spotted Sophie, coocoo’d her name loudly and squeezed her with a smile as wide as I could stretch. Welcome Sophie!

After a night of catching up , we woke early the next morning to start planning out adventure together. We quickly decided that the West Coast was our first port of call and within 3 hours of our first day together in Australia, we had booked flights for the following morning, this morning in fact and returning to how this post started, we are indeed now on the plane on our way to the beautiful coast of Western Australia. Our plans are to hire a car and with a 2-man tent and stove, will spend the next two weeks journeying along the coast, stopping from town to town, beach to beach, wherever our instincts and desires take us.

I’ll be sure to keep in touch and will provide you with as much photographic aid as possible.

So ‘til then, keep on keeping on all… we most definitely will.