Posted by athompson on 2/6/2009 11:01 PM Life    australia

I have travelled round the world three times.

My “destination” each time was Australia, a country that I have visited five times, absolutely love, and highly recommend to everyone.

Each time, I circumnavigated the globe in a different direction; east, west, and east.

First Trip
London – (Singapore) – Sydney – Melbourne – Sydney – Brisbane – Honolulu – Los Angeles – London.

Second Trip
London – Los Angeles – Sydney – Brisbane – Noosa Heads – Townsville – Magnetic Island – Sydney – London

Third Trip
London – Sydney – Brisbane – Cairns – Sydney – (Auckland) – Los Angeles – London

I enjoyed these trips immensely and would willingly visit there again tomorrow! I have barely explored any of that great continent.

The most embarrassing thing about the second trip, was  Noosa Heads. From Brisbane you can either go south to Coolangatta on the Gold Coast, or north to Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast. I did both, but spent longer in Noosa. The Gold Coast was more touristy at the time and the Sunshine Coast much less so. Noosa, in particular, was one main street with some small hotels on the beach. Wonderful.

I embarrassed myself by lying on the beach one day. Just lying there. It wasn’t that I was physically unattractive and a blemish on the beautiful sands. But rather the length of time I spent out there. I am British and rather white. I had never, ever been out in the sun like that. I was out there almost seven hours. I burnt like you would not believe!

After two days of applying liberal quantities of lotions, essentially everything the pharmacy stocked, I was ready to try the trip back to the UK. The seats on the bus back to Brisbane were fake plastic. The type of stuff that you stick to very easily. I left a lot of skin on that bus.

Good times.

There was one trip that I really wanted to take but couldn’t. I was working for an airline and was based at the time in the north of England. A cargo aircraft was visiting and I struck up a conversation with the crew, one of whom was the owner. They mentioned Australia and I told them how much I enjoyed it there.

“Would you like to come on our next trip?”, the owner asked.
”Of course! When do you leave?”
”We’ll be heading south in six weeks.”
”How long will the trip take?”, I enquired.
”Not really sure, it all depends on the cargo.”

It turned out that because they would be unlikely to get a load which they could take direct to Australia, they would carry cargo between cities as they made their way down-under. They might fly from the UK to Spain, then on to North Africa, around Africa for a couple of weeks, then across to the Dubai area, heading down to Malaysia, and finally Australia. They might even have to wait a few days or a week for a load to become available, or backtrack. They made it sound like I would see a lot of African countries.

This sounded very exciting! Unfortunately my employer was not so keen on the idea of me being away on a very open-ended trip, so I didn’t go.

Which reminds me of  a trip on a mail flight, but that is for next time.