2 February, 2011

Au Revoir

Waiting for the call to board my flight from Brisbane to Seoul, overnight bag in hand, once again I go over my reasons for leaving.

My ten years in Australia have been interesting, inspiring and involving, but they have also been isolated, insular and irritating for reasons as much to do with me as to do with the country. Australia is so far away! From everywhere! Still!

It takes as long now to fly to Australia as it did in 1972! How can that be? Surely aviation progress should mean that we could be in Sydney for breakfast and Sienna for lunch - but no. Rocket flights do not yet exist. Any trip made from Australia requires a minimum of five days to be fully enjoyed, and herein lies the crux of my problem.

My first trip to the UK in nine years, for my parents' golden wedding anniversary in 2009, reunited me with friends, places, countries, sights, sounds and feelings that had been dormant for the past nine years since my arrival in 2000 to take up full time residence in Oz, and they returned with a vengeance.

The architecture! The culture! The history! Yes, breakfast in London and bruch in Milan if you fancy it! Nip over to Morocco? Which flight - we could be there for cocktails! I had forgotten all about this and the feeling that my world had shrunk to encompass only my home town on the Gold Coast, and driveable distances from it, was quite suffocating.

Thus was born a fierce drive to return to the Northern hemisphere and reacquaint myself with what I had forsaken during my years Down Under.

Thus I had bade farewell to my longsuffering husband and oblivious pets for a four month sojourn to the South of France to find out if the French really do know how to live a better life, and if we could perhaps join them, even for a little while.

Clutching my pass and that overnight bag, I boarded the first leg of my flight to Paris, via Seoul.