It's been 1 year since we landed in Adelaide, Australia. Its fair to say we had a bit of a hard landing and a jarring end to our travels - rushing to the other side of the world because of bad news is never how anyone wants to end their travels. We had known for a long time that Sasha's Mum Pam had a cancer lump in her stomach, but it was getting treated. We'd settled on Adelaide, Sasha's home city being the destination at the end of our travels so that we could spend time around Pam for a few years. But the family was quite unaware that the treatment Pam had talked about was never going to fix it, and suddenly we all found out it was worse than they'd known. Instead of visiting Hawaii and then some time in NZ, we plunged headlong into grappling with making decisions around Pam's immediate and long term welfare, as well as getting set up in Australia quick smart in order to get jobs and therefore income flowing in. getting to know Sasha's family better, constant meetings with people in hospitals, spending time with Pam, getting Tax numbers, bank accounts, and applying for jobs. I was lucky - I managed to start a job, and a decent one at that, about 3 weeks after we landed. Sasha didn't have the same amount of luck - the job market in Adelaide is not so vibrant in her career field, and added to that has been the emotional toll. We were lucky with Pam initially being in hospital, and then in respite that we could stay at Pam's rented unit and use her car. It was also a bit of a double-edged sword - Pam was loathe to throw away anything and the unit was a bit cluttered, to put it mildly. We tried tidying, but could only do so much as Pam kept asking for various items and knew exactly where they used to be, until we re-arranged things so that we could function in the house. The one thing Sasha threw out, was the very thing Pam asked for 2 days later! It all has meant that in living in the unit, Sasha has been surrounded by constant reminders of memories of her Mum. It has taken an emotional toll on both of us to slowly go through everything, but Sasha especially so. Pam was much more with-it when we arrived than she had been when we left the US, thanks to drugs reducing the swelling in her brain around the lump inside it - or "The Apple" as Pam kept referring to it. Because she needed care and her mobility was a bit impaired, we organised to get her out of the hospital and into respite care in a home that if need be could become her long-term care facility - which it did. She was quite mobile at first, and found it quite amusing when the Radiation Therapy on the lump in her head caused her hair to fall out. The Radiation Therapy reduced the size of the lump, but could not remove it and couldn't stop the cancer's overall advance - we knew that any time we had was finite because there was no getting better. We went and visited Pam almost every opportunity we could, and often took her down to the nearby beach for a change of scenery and so she could have a smoke - despite the smoking ultimately causing the cancer which started in her lungs and then spread, she wasn't going to stop! At first when her mobility was good, we could walk down there or go in the car, but as time went on we'd take her down in the wheelchair. Slowly watching Pam's decline was hard for me, but immeasurably harder for Sasha. Pam beat the doctor's estimates of 6 months, but ultimately succumbed at the end of March. If I'm honest I can't say Adelaide seems like home yet. Part of that is until March, a lot of our lives revolved around Pam and rightly so. While Sasha's friends have been very welcoming to me and I get along with them really well, I can't say I have many if any of my own accord just yet. Part of this is being so "close" to NZ, but also so very far away - NZ is "next door" to Australia but from Adelaide it's not easy to get to and it also costs a lot. If we were in Sydney or Melbourne, popping across to NZ for a few days would be quite practical - but it's 2 flights minimum to get to Wellington or Christchurch from here. There are various things I haven't been able to go see or do in NZ for 5 years now, and there's still no way of knowing when I might be able to go do them. I'm sure at some point Adelaide will seem like home, and I'll get into things more here in my own accord. Living in Adelaide has been good though. Sasha didn't really want to come back here, and with everything going on kept a bit of a low-profile after coming back and has slowly eased back into some of her friendship circles. But Adelaide has been a rather pleasant place to live in so far - living in Glenelg has had a lot to recommend for it, and being a block away from the beach was very handy on the hot summer days. The city has more going on in terms of activities and events than Sasha remembers it to, and we've done a whole heap of things in the city since we've been back - and we went really hard during Fringe time! The city feels like a cross between Christchurch and Wellington to me - Christchurch in layout, and perhaps attitude but a bit more like Wellington in terms of what's going on. Its definitely more relaxed than the pace of London, and it might not have all the "cool" of Berlin to explore, but its definitely got its own thing going on! And there is some train stuff here, we have done a little bit of it but there's still more to go see at some point, and perhaps potentially get involved with. In among all of what's been going on we have found some opportunities to travel. We set the focus as being Australia, since Sasha hasn't seen a lot of her own country and "while we're here" we might as well take advantage of that. My work has sent me away on work trips to various spots in South Australia too, giving me a chance to see more of this state which I call home for now. Airfares are not cheap in Aus - they were never going to be Ryanair-cheap but even by NZ standards I feel like they are expensive. But we have a car at our disposal and it might be old but its proving up to the task. We've taken it on trips to Port Augusta, and even as far afield as Broken Hill in NSW - visiting Mildura in Victoria in the process too. We even took it down the south coast to Kingston SE and slept in the back of it once so far, and have intentions to use it as a "mini-campervan" again. We headed off to NZ for a week over New Year's, but the biggest travel we've done so far has been to the Northern Territory where we flew to Darwin, picked up a Campervan and drove to Alice Springs and to Uluru - the red center of Australia. For Sasha's birthday we went to Cairns in Queensland for a week, and yet to come are a few days in Perth, Western Australia and a trip to Tasmania - with other trips to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and elsewhere in mind also! We might not be hopping around as much as we were previously, but its something - especially since the hopping isn't anywhere near as affordable as it was in Europe! My relationship with Sasha has been built around travel and travelling together - and we work really well together in that. Sasha had always said that the real test of our relationship would be whether we are able to "stay still together", and living here in Adelaide with everything that has been going on has been the absolute test of that. I'm very pleased to say that it has been proven we are indeed very good at "staying still together" - to the point where I had no qualms asking Sasha to marry me in February, and I'm very happy to report she said Yes! So for now, we'll continue to live and work in Adelaide at least until our Wedding in August 2020. What happens beyond that is yet to be decided. We've had a few people express surprise that following Pam's passing we're not immediately heading off to another country (such as Canada) to go live, but the prospect of uprooting everything to go live somewhere else temporarily again doesn't appeal to me now. I think I'd much rather do big holidays but always know that I have a home of my own and things I can pick up and carry on with on the return, rather than start from scratch each time which can be quite tough really. That's not to say we're going to be in Adelaide or Australia forever - we don't know that yet. If we don't stay in Australia though, we'd be moving to NZ. But that's a question for another day. For now, we're here in Adelaide, making the most of being in this city while recuperating and finding our feet again, as well as planning a wedding (which is not easy!). It's nice to know that we can stay here as long as we want, and aren't facing a fixed deadline of having to pack everything up and move somewhere else. Plus it's great to be able to spend time with Sasha's brother and his family here in Adelaide - Sasha's nieces have even come to stay for a sleepover at the unit. So that has been life beyond the big OE so far, a year filled with a lot of uncertainty and turmoil but also with a lot of promise and excitement for the future. Life is a different kind of exciting to that which we had in Europe, and we'll always have all those memories of our travels there to look fondly on while we look to future travels and adventures elsewhere, as well as in life - but most importantly and excitingly, a life together for Sasha and I :)
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The time had come for our trip to end. But it was more than that. It was many things all at once. But right then, at the Delta Airlines counter at San Francisco Airport, I didn't have time to think about all that - in fact most of the day I had felt like I'd been in a bit of a daze. I remember a lot about what happened earlier in the day, as we traipsed around San Francisco - but the minute we walk into that airport, my memory seems to fade into a bit of a fog and I remember feeling a bit like that. We had 3 flights to get to Adelaide, all booked through Virgin Australia but the first flight was through Delta Airlines from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I don't remember much about the flight, which is interesting since I always feel like I'm eagle-eyed about flying on a new airline and spotting any differences. I can't remember much about the flight other than being in the aircraft with its blue seats, I don't even remember if there was tea or coffee served or not. I guess I was in a bit of a stress fog, as getting on that next flight was key - which makes me think that perhaps that first flight was running a bit late. But it landed in LAX with time to spare, and in fact despite everyone telling us LAX is a nightmare of an airport, we found our gate with relative ease. Our next flight was the big one - 15 hours aboard a Virgin Australia 777-300ER to Melbourne, Australia and from there we'd fly onwards to Adelaide. It would be the longest flight either of us had ever taken, but only by about an hour or so. Sasha asked at the gate if there was any chance of an upgrade as we were going to be rolling off the plane and going to the hospital, so anything to help us get a better sleep would be appreciated. They said that wasn't possible - however the flight was not fully booked and we'd have a row of 3 seats to ourselves. That was something at least. I remember sort of just plodding along, trying my best to comfort Sasha who was doing okay but not great, until about 5 minutes before boarding time, I saw Big Bird being towed towards our gate. I went up to the window to take photos, but it was now that I started to "wake up" out of the fog. Big Bird edging towards the gate meant many different things - it was the end of our "End Of" travels, our 4 months of travelling solid at an end, a week sooner than planned - no Hawaii, and also no indeterminate rest-up time in NZ before heading onwards to Adelaide. But it was more than that - the minute we stepped on that plane, we'd depart the Northern Hemisphere which we'd called home for the last 4 years. This was the end of our OE's (Overseas Experience's) right here - mine had started, properly, by flying on a Virgin Australia Big Bird from Sydney Airport to Abu Dhabi in the Northern Hemisphere. It was about to end by boarding another Virgin Australia Big Bird to go back to the Southern Hemisphere. I was getting all sorts of feels inside me now. No sense of adventure this time, and no fear of the unknown - not so much fear of whats to come, but more worry and for the same reasons, concern too. The OE was not ending with a triumphal return, but a hurried, muted and sudden rush. But no regrets, no sadness that it was all ending - an overall sense that its time to go home, and for good reason. For me its a new home, in another country, with its own associated challenges, but the OE was over. And I was okay with that.
We did have a row of 3 seats to ourselves, and because Virgin Australia seem to be one of the few carriers who configure their 777 economy section in a 3-3-3 layout instead of squeezing in an extra row of seats for the more common 3-4-3 layout. As a result, we had more comfortable seats too - and that extra seat was useful. I sat against the window, Sasha sat in the aisle and we put the spare seat between us. I took another travel drowsy tablet before trying to get to sleep, and it did a reasonable job of giving me a decent sleep on board. I didn't get more than about 6 hours though, and spent the rest of the time watching movies mostly. The food on board was rather good. Of note, we took off on the evening of 29th July, and landed the morning of 31st July. Thanks to the International Date Line, our 30th July lasted no more than a few hours - the shortest day I've ever yet had. Strange to think too that we'd flown over Hawaii, but since it was dark there was nothing to see. Transiting in Melbourne soon became a nightmare. We landed, and all was well until we went to disembark the aircraft and an announcement came over saying if you are continuing on to a domestic flight, you had to collect your bags and clear customs. Sasha was sure that didn't apply to us, as we'd asked in San Francisco if the bags would go all the way through or did we have to do anything, and they had said all the way through and didn't have to do anything. I had wondered how that might work for customs in Adelaide, but after asking a hostess it was clear - we had to collect our bags, then re-check in for the domestic flight. We only had a 1hr 30min layover between flights, and bag drop closed 30mins before the flight. It might be tight - not exactly the kind of extra stress we needed right now! Not only that, but as we walked up the air bridge off the plane suddenly Sasha wasn't sure if she'd stuck her jacket in her bag or if it was still in the overhead locker. She was 99% sure it was in the locker so I went back, got intercepted by the hostesses and they went to look for it - I couldn't go back on the plane myself. Next thing, Sasha's coming back down yelling out she has her jacket - it was in her bag. Crisis averted, but poor Sasha was frazzled and everything was just too much right now. We went through the smart gates, then to the bag carousels. For some reason, our bags were among the very last to come out, and time was well and truly ticking. We had to declare one or two small things, and this saw us get shunted into a lane where our bags got x-rayed and then a sniffer dog checked them out. This all cost us precious time, and time was running out. We raced through Melbourne Airport, getting to the Virgin Australia domestic check-in desk with 5 minutes to spare - but we had to join the back of a queue. We got up to the desk just on bag close, but we had just made it. But that was uncomfortably close - if we'd been late through no fault of our own, they would have had to bump us to the next available Adelaide flight - but it would have delayed our arrival in Adelaide by 2-4 hours, really not ideal given the circumstances. But we were okay - frazzled, tired, tetchy, stressed, but okay. I barely remember anything about the flight to Adelaide other than it did the "traditional" flyover of the central city as we came into land, and Sasha's brother Steve was at the gate to meet us when we came off the plane. We were in Adelaide - we'd made it. We went back to Steve's place, debriefed, had showers and then made our way to the hospital to visit Pam. She was a lot more alert than Steve had told us before we hopped on the flight back, but that's because the drugs which reduce swelling had really kicked in. Pam did not remember me at first, but by the end of the visit did - and even was asking me computer-related questions about her interactive hospital TV! On the whole, she seemed to be doing really well considering and a world away from her Terminal diagnosis. Our day ended by going back to Pam's unit, and being given the keys by Steve. This was to be our home in the short term while Pam was in hospital - at least we didn't have to worry about where to stay and how long for, and we had access to Pam's car too. But that was it - we'd arrived, and the OE was over. The next chapter in our lives had begun. |
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August 2019
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