Quite suddenly we find ourselves planning a journey to the other side of the world, to a land where spiders and snakes are best avoided. This (the journey, not the snakes) is because many years ago I married into a widely scattered family, one contingent of which had chosen to live in Australia, the consequence of which is that a family visit entails travelling to the other side of the world.
It turns out that if you live in Scotland you can't just get on a bus and ask the driver to drop you off in Brisbane. Instead it requires advance booking of a seat on an aeroplane which in turn needs to stop and refuel somewhere en route. To organise this you need a willingness to negotiate the many traps and pitfalls that lie in wait for the inexperienced traveller, including negotiating the complications of booking online through an unhelpful website, putting at risk a considerable quantity of money. But fortunately for us we have a son and daughter-in-law who both have considerable expertise in travelling to far away places and when we called them for advice they rather surprisingly said, 'Can we come too?' Before we could catch our breath they had flights booked for all four of us, visas secured and all the required inoculations, leaving us only to make decisions about how many pairs of shorts to take and whether to pack the sandals or wear them.
We were travelling in March, the back end of winter in Scotland, but late summer on the other side of the world, which meant we'd be faced with a temperature adjustment along with the time difference. I wondered whether if we were to seal ourselves away for a week in a heated box with lights programmed to come on to match Australian daylight time (10 hours ahead of GMT) then we'd be fully acclimatised by the time of our departure. Strangely this idea didn't appeal to my fellow travellers although the most organised amongst us was seen wearing dark glasses at odd times of the day as part of her acclimatisation strategy.
The logistics of packing were riddled with complexity due to the need for us to plan for spending a few days in Bristol where our son Ben and daughter-in-law live, as they were to be driving us to the airport in London. My first packing list had the shorts, t-shirts and sandals we'd need in Australia and list number two had the warmer clothing one might expect to need in Bristol in early spring but each list also contained essentials like socks, underwear and shoes which either would or would not be flying with us. Everything on list one then had to be allocated as either hold or carry-on luggage and weighed carefully. Only when the lists were translated into reality could we leave.
Our drive south to Bristol was exhausting for us due to the rain-spray soaked motorways we had to negotiate plus our unfamiliarity with heavy, fast moving traffic flying down the outside lane. Driving within Bristol itself has many additional hazards for the inexperienced, which is what we are. These come in the form of electric scooters and cargo bikes. It is also a place where lane discipline comes with a set of rules that were completely alien to us, failure to comply with which invokes extreme road rage.
In Bristol we parked our campervan in the front garden where we slept for a few days before we all set off to spend our final night in a London hotel so as to catch the early flight the following day. 
This is us arriving at Gatwick and from here on we were entirely at the mercy of our son and daughter-in-law, to whom all this is second nature.
This is us arriving at Gatwick and from here on we were entirely at the mercy of our son and daughter-in-law, to whom all this is second nature.The long journey to Australia involved a stopover in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the airport terminal looked more like nature reserve.
We then climbed aboard an enormous plane in which we sat for many hours, being shaken about and fed from time to time, an experience to be endured then forgotten. Some twelve hours later we landed and were met at Brisbane airport by Kate's brother, Jim, who drove us for another three hours to his home in Cooloola Cove. By this stage our bodies were suffering from being cooped up for so long and my memories of the remainder of that day are non existent.
We then climbed aboard an enormous plane in which we sat for many hours, being shaken about and fed from time to time, an experience to be endured then forgotten. Some twelve hours later we landed and were met at Brisbane airport by Kate's brother, Jim, who drove us for another three hours to his home in Cooloola Cove. By this stage our bodies were suffering from being cooped up for so long and my memories of the remainder of that day are non existent.
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