Last December, at the age of thirty years, I left Australia for the first time. I spent three weeks escorting my dear old mother around Europe, both of us on our first overseas holidays; for myself, my first true holiday after seven years of teaching. Mum had waited considerably more time to take her holiday, 32 years after starting nursing.
We left Cairns on December 17. The International Airport resembled a worksite as we lined up with our half empty bags (in the expectation that we would both bring back a large number of gifts). Frustratingly, we waited nearly 90 minutes to be processed, caught as we were between a very large number of Japanese catching the flight home.
Happily I had a window seat. The Jetstar plane rumbled down the runway and then took the circular route out of the city, past the Esplanade, over Trinity Bay and then set a course northwards.
I saw my first sight of "foreign" soil as we passed over Papua New Guinea, then racked in the midst of a constitutional crisis that isn't completely resolved even now. As a border at Saint Augustines College I made mates with plenty of proud Kumuls, many of whom were in Australia under the sponsorship of the Ausaid program. They spoke often of the beauty of PNG and here it was unfolding below me. The television monitors helpfully kept geography nerds on the plane updated with precise locations on their monitors.
We then slipped over the Equator and over the North Pacific. I had supposed we might roughly shadow the Phillipines and then Taiwan on our way towards Tokyo (our first stopover) but instead we went due north. I counted no less than three airports on the tiny island of Guam.
On domestic routes I try to avoid Jetstar where possible, although I was pleasantly surprised by the service on this international flight. Unfortunately the service didn't extend to providing adequate legroom, and so I found myself surrendering the window seat in order to stretch my legs and go for the occasional walk past dozing passengers.
The sun set on the opposite side of the plane where we were sitting, and slowly icicles began to form on the window. We were definitely not in the southern hemisphere now.
My first sight of Japan was the eastern city of Choshi. It was 7:30pm local time, and we had been in the air for eight hours.
Mum had once caught a plane in the 1970s between Cairns and Brisbane and remembered the state capital "shining like fairy lights" as they descended. If Brisbane was a fairy light, then the eastern extremities of Tokyo was the entire Christmas tree. Inky black rivers provided an eerie void between the suburban sprawl that soon filled our windows.
Touchdown at Narita airport, and grateful for the chance to walk more than a few metres at a time. A curious little tram took us from the plane into the terminal proper. A quick Facebook message to let everyone back home that we had managed to end up on the opposite side of the world, and then it was time to negotiate our way through customs.
Thankfully we found the experience a very straight-forward and methodical procedure, quite unlike 'Border Patrol' or many of the other shows on television with the same theme. I regretted not remembering (or at least learning) the phrase for 'thank you' as the customs officials respectfully bowed and welcomed us to Japan.
We then had to catch an inter-airport express, as our next flight was not taking off from Narita but Haneda Airport. Mum negotiated the bizarre ritual of the smoker's room (a glass case outside the terminal), while I had the equally-bizarre job of making sense of Japanese toilets.
We also discovered that in the eight hours it took us to fly from Australia to Japan, Kim Jong-Ill had passed away. Nothing heightens your senses and makes you think "Shit, we really are overseas now" than having a despotic dictator of the country next door bite the dust. The reaction from the locals was split, between genuine worry and indifference. They had been through an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011; this was but a blip on the radar by comparison.
Ninety minutes later, we had found ourselves in Haneda Airport, the old Tokyo International Airport. I wore down the battery on my iPhone to negligible levels, while Mum made her first holiday purchase; a pack of cigarettes of dubious origin and quality.
After checking in we found out that we were three hours early for our flight, which would not take off for Paris until 2am. Additionally, we found out the entire flight would take place in the night; not the most conducive conditions for taking photos. We did find some amusing Engrish examples though in the shops of Haneda Airport, as well as the biggest depository of Kit Kats I had ever seen.
Eventually we were called onto our flight, taxied for what seemed like an eternity, and then took off into the cold winter night over Tokyo. I then discovered, to my immense displeasure, that I could simply not relax my body, or brain, or both simultaneously, in order to sleep for any longer than an hour at a time.
I am somewhat a heavy sleeper, but the conditions need to be almost exactly perfect before I enter the state of hibernation. The room must be dark: negative. There must be minimal noise: negative. I must be able to stretch out: negative. The room must be slightly cool: affirmative, although after an hour the heaters began to work and the cabin swiftly resembled Cairns in October. Most critically: I must be horizontal. With virtually none of these prerequisites ticked, I bounced between fitful sleep and frustrated awareness of lack of sleep.
Somewhere over Siberia I decided it would be pointless to try to sleep, so began to read and listen to music. I also adjusted my watch to French time; 1:30am, landing in 'only' four and a half hours. Brilliant. I spread my gear far and wide and settled in for the long haul.
Eventually the rest of the cabin aroused themselves from their sleep and we were served breakfast at 3:30am. French cheese, French crackers, French croissants, French yoghurt. The only thing that wasn't French was the coffee, which was simply hideous.
After what seemed like an eternity, the plane slipped out of Russian airspace and over the lakes of Finland, invisible to all due to the cloud cover and night sky. It was at this time that I finally understood that although Europe was a good deal smaller than Australia (at least, the European Union less Russia), it would still take a good deal of time to fly over it. The distance from Finland to Paris would be roughly the same as from Cairns to Sydney.
Eventually however, we found ourselves landing almost exactly on schedule at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The exceptionally heavy sleepers woke up at this time, happy to have avoided the very worst of the jet lag. On the other hand, I still was bouncing like an energiser bunny, having not had a true sleep since leaving Australia.
If the Cairns International Airport resembled a jobsite, then Paris CdG was the epitome of European sophistication. Thousands of beams of timber lined the roof of the terminal, and made the place feel less like an airport and more like an elaborate winter lodge.
We caught the plane to London an hour later. I was once again lucky enough to get the window seat, and soon saw what entire generations of Australians - but not my own - referred to as the Home Country.
London soon came into view, and only the efforts of a strident Air France hostess stopped me from taking more photos. But there it was, in all it's splendour. The Bridge, the Thames, St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Wembley, Hyde Park....locations which had only existed in books or television in past experience were now coming to life like an elaborate 3D storybook.
Eventually the wheels touched down at Heathrow, and after an inexplicable twenty minute wait on the Tarmac, we eventually disembarked and went off to find our first major obstacle to our holiday: Her Majesty's Custom Officers.
