Around The World Without Flying: My welcome home

I am back on Melbourne now, soon to write about my amazing trip on the Ghan to Northern Australia and the Kimberley, the Kimberley Coast, Kakadu and Arnhem Land.

What a home-coming I had. I came down with a virus at the end of my stay in Lake Macquarie, which triggered bad asthma, so when I set off on the long journey home I was not full of vim and vigour - yet so looking forward to being home. It was an almost three-hour bus trip back to Sydney (maintenance work was being done on the train tracks), an overnight stay at a hotel located right at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, then an 11-hour train trip to Melbourne, starting at 7.30 am the next morning.

By the time the train was pulling into Melbourne, I was exhausted yet excited about seeing my daughter after all this time. Unfortunately my grandson was too ill to come, exhibiting flu-like symptoms after being away on a three-day school camp. My daughter texted me to say she was running late. Meanwhile another friend texted me to ask me if I had arrived yet, as it was bucketing down where she lived. I replied that I could just see a most beautiful rainbow from the train.

Little did I imagine those text messages were all part of a conspiracy between several of my good friends and my daughter, who were all waiting on the platform with a huge banner to welcome me home and wanted me to think I would be arriving with no-one there to greet me as the train pulled in! One friend had flown all the way from Perth to be there - that is a four-hour flight from the west coast of Australia! And there were photos of friends who would have liked to be there but could not get there from their homes in the Northern Territory and north Queensland! I was absolutely stunned to see them all cheering and waving! What a most wonderful, kind gesture! Of course there were lots of hugs, laughter and photos.

I would add that some of them did the same to farewell me eight months ago, sneaking past a friend and I whilst we were having a coffee on the station concourse down on to the cold windy platform really early in the morning. At the time, other passengers kept looking at me wondering what all the fuss was about. There was no celebrity to be seen, just an ordinary ‘senior’ lady! No doubt some of the passengers on the Sydney-to-Melbourne train wondered the same.

How lucky am I to have such beautiful friends, and such a lovely daughter!

So off we went home and I relished seeing the city lights at night as we drove the 8 km or so to my home. It was so good to see my city with fresh eyes.

I let us into the house with some trepidation, wondering what I would find. My house had not been occupied for eight months, though my brother very kindly came around every couple of weeks to check it out - but only from the outside. Would it be a ‘Dracula’s Cave’ full of spiders and spider webs as one of my English friends teased me?

As it turned out, I found maybe about four dead spiders and about 20 dead millipedes coiled up on the carpet. (Once every few years millipedes start coming under the external doors from the garden, then turn up their toes - do millipedes have toes?- to the daisies.) There was very little dust.

Before I left I had organised house-sitters but they fell through at the last minute. And I had the windows, venetian blinds, carpets and oven professionally cleaned just before I left so the house was ready for them. It turned out that was not a waste. It really paid off because as soon as I vacuumed up the small number of little dead bodies, the house looked pristine. But I had kept my gardener and my lawn-mowing man coming the whole time I was away, my mail redirected, and my monitored extensive security system on. As well, I have security lights with motion sensors right around the outside of the house, and a light going on and off in the house that was permanently wired into the circuitry. So I was very, very lucky to have my house remain in good condition. The only problem was some plants had suffered from insufficient watering, but they will come back.

At least, I thought that was the only problem. When I went to try on my kitchen tap to make my daughter and I a cup of tea, water whooshed out from the wrong spot.The valve had gone with disuse. Then it bucketed down outside and it was like Niagara Falls - the verandah, which has a tray-like roof- had blocked and water was cascading over the sides. (Those tray-like roofs with really narrow drainage pipes were a feature of houses like mine that were built in the 1950s.) But my lovely plumber came out the next day and fixed the tap and the verandah for me. I had to get a whole new tap assembly for the kitchen sink, but when I think about it - what little price I paid for being away for so long.

Needless to say, I have been on a whirlwind since then - unpacking, sorting, washing, catching up on 8 months of ‘snail mail’, going to my podiatrist to have my corns attended to at long last and to my hairdresser to deal with my ‘bird’s nest’ , and of course catching up with friends.

Now I am back ‘down-to-earth’, in many ways it seems like my long adventure was just a wonderful, magical dream. And yet all the time little things trigger the most delightful memories. And I know that even though I have the loveliest of family and friends right here, my life is so much richer for all the special people I met on my journey, and all the incredible sights I saw and experiences I had.

Life is good!

PS I did kiss my washing machine, as I said I would . . . JS