Okay, so strictly speaking I have a keyboard and I’m willing to travel, so shoot me for artistic licence.

Today, I’m down-under. Yep, we made it to Australia, but what journey it’s been. Bring back steamboats and deckchairs!

Day one of our Australian adventure actually involved travelling as opposed to sitting on a beach in Oz having a Barbie.
Instead, we travelled from Larnaca to Doha in Qatar and then on to Perth in Western Australia, a time of around 24 hours from start to finish. We expected little time for sleep and we were correct.
The time difference between home in Cyprus to here in Australia is huge and having just woken up at 08:00 here in Perth, my body clock tells me its still very early back home. I must admit I find it hard to get my head round global time differences.

So the journey started late in the afternoon with a flight from Larnaca to Doha in Qatar. It was a cramped 3.5 hour journey to the tiny Gulf state, but the service and food were great. This state airline knows a thing or too about customer service.
What a dazzling and bright place Doha is from the air. I immediately thought of the place as a ‘City of Lights’ and that is an understatement.
Doha, indeed Qatar in general, have invested millions in infrastructure – and it shows.
They think big in Qatar and how much bigger can you get than a monorail inside the airport?
Hamid airport is a hub to the world and it is huge. Security is so tight we ended up emptying our hand luggage of kindles, android mobile phones and cameras to be check and scanned. No time to explore but there seems to be a never ending stream of passengers, all the world’s nations were moving through that complex in the early hours.
Then came the flight from Doha to Perth. That was on a huge Boieng 777 and the flight was packed to the gunnels. 11 hours of torture across the Indian Ocean. Up in flames went my poetic dream of watching the dawn rise over the sea as the window shutters were kept down during the day! No one seemed to know why. Very strange.
The back seat wide-screen entertainment was great, or would. have been if the seating wasn’t so cramped. I’m 6 foot 2 inches, 2 metres whatever, tall and it was hard to get comfy. Even harder when the lady in front decided to recline her seat! Follow this with the guy behind playing games on his touch screen, sorry, his stab screen, and it was like being a stabbed in the back sandwich – not at all nice.
But we arrived in the evening found our hire car and found our AirBnB in Quinns Rock in the Perth suburbs, close to the beach area.
Today will be a day off getting our recovering, getting our bearings and resting. It’s predicted to be 37 degress celsius today and I can see the sky is really blue already. Get your self ready, Australia, here we come.

Tom Kane © 2018
 

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