COUPLE OF WEEKS AWAY

We had settled in for a long period of no travel. Rab had decreed it – “No more travel for at least a year. The boys deserve the time at home.”

But man (or woman) proposes and Fate disposes. Peter Skirving, my man in Queensland back in the day when we were in the same corporation – can it REALLY be twenty years plus since those perfidious Poms sold us off ? – to the Swiss of all people! My very life! Anyway Peter called to say that one of our colleagues from that time had fallen off the perch. I didn’t know the man well, but his passing was another little mile peg along the journey of my life. And as ever, it was enough to get Rab thinking about seeing folk we hadn’t seen for some time. Since many of them are clustered in the southern part of Queensland and northern New South Wales, that provided the focus for a trip – a drive down the coast. We couldn’t remember just when we had last been up that way. It was certainly before we came back to Australia seven years ago – the best guess we came up with was about twelve years.

The top end of the drive would be Noosa – 1,830 km from Melbourne – say a comfortable four day drive up the Newell Highway. That proposal was quashed on the basis that it was too far for me to drive. My feeble argument that it wasn’t, that I enjoyed driving, that I wanted to see the inland parts we hadn’t seen before were brushed aside as immaterial. No, we would fly to Noosa, pick up a hire car and drive down to Warner’s Bay, just outside Newcastle, flying home from Newcastle, a little under 1,000 km and, so my good lady thought, manageable by an old crock like me.

Boys were booked in to their luxury quarters, we booked on Virgin for the first time and managed to get a SUV for hire. We didn’t think we’d need a car that big or powerful but there wasn’t much in the cost between that and a comfortable saloon and we thought we’d get a better view.

Thursday August 10. It was a cold and frosty morning when we got going. Strange, as ever when the boys are away, not to have two happy hounds to greet us. Our limo arrived dead on time at 07h30 as ordered. We have been using a limo service for years now because of the unreliability of taxis out here in the suburbs. If they don’t turn up on time and you call the controller you’ll be told that another will be along “shortly”. Press for a definition of that term and you’re told 20 – 30 minutes. Tough if they don’t turn up then. Nick is the usual owner/driver, but he had sent Harry who we had not met before. A friendly bloke who never stopped talking, much of it about how good he was as a taxi driver back in the day and what excellent service he provided now – although times were hard and business was scarce.

We got to the airport on time as traffic was light and then had to face the new check-in procedures. Although we have travelled a good deal, most of our flights in Australia have been from the International terminals where the procedures are very different from those in the Domestic ones. We learned a bit in March checkin in to Qantas for the flight to Sydney, but, naturally Virgin’s check-in system was different. We managed with the help of a little passing Virgin.

The flight left on time and was comfortable, although the seats are VERY small and I had my knees touching the seat in front. Also very difficult to pick up anything on the floor as there wasn’t enough space between the rows to get my body down far enough. A first for us was not being offered refreshments. With the Pay As You Go approach these day on the discounted flights, everything is extra. Not that it bothered us in the least – we managed to survive the two hour plus flight without eating.

Our pal Jesse was there to meet us at airport. He looked better than when we last saw him, we thought, but basically, like so many of our friends, he seemed not to have aged. I always think this is a prime example of how we can fool ourselves and demonstrates the difference between perception and reality.

Jesse was our doctor more than forty years ago when we were all in Cape Town – and in fact lived next door to each other. Ever solicitous, he offered to remove basal cell carcinoma from my cheek as we drove out of the airport parking lot. I declined his kind offer.