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Today, somewhere in the middle of what finished up as a very long day, I looked down at the landscape ten kilometres under the wings of our jumbo, and saw a coastal village. Habitation, water, enclosures, roads, buildings. An odd sort of layout to my eyes, but after long hours of the nothingness of the outback, and more hours of hazy ocean and dim green landshapes in the distance, my eyes sought out patterns and life.
I interrupted the movie to call up the map on my seatback entertainment screen. Atonement, I think it was, a tale of passion and deceit in 1930s England, extremely well down, and certainly worth this second look. After noting that the temperature outside in English and Chinese was forty below zero on a sunny day, I found the name of the place. Philippines, as I’d guessed, and the name matched its exoticity.
I’d heard of Zamboanga, and there it was, under my eyes for a few moments before the big jet engine on the wing swallowed it up.
I’d kind of hoped that I could look down and see a big white ship slicing a creamy path through the tropical blue, but no, that was too much to hope for. We’ll see our cruiseliner in a few days when she pulls into Hong Kong.
It’s rare that I travel overseas with my wife, and even rarer to take my children. “You have no children!” insists my daughter, and I nod in agreement. There are now four adults in my closest family, and no children. In due course, I imagine, there will be kids again, but this time it will be other who will worry over them for years on end.
But here is my wife beside me, lost in some dreadful tale of alien invasion while I look out on seas where pirate captains stroked their dangling moustaches, and further back in the plane my son and daughter are probably exploring the strange wastelands of their entertainment systems. Manga Monkeys Mutilate Manhattan, or possibly Kath and Kim.
Usually my travels take me whizzing around the world. Twenty flights in twenty days, just me and seventy kilos of luggage. I gallop around airports, I sleep when I want, and if my taxidriver time patterns see me wake in the middle of the night, why but I can turn on all the lights and the TV, make coffee, and have a party on the internet.
So if there’s a few mistakes in spelling here and ther, please forgive me. It’s four in the morning and I’m quietly tapping away at my laptop in the dimness, my screen turned down to a bare glow.
Four in yesterday’s morning, and I was dozing fitfully in Canberra. I never sleep well the night before a big trip. There’s always things I need to do on waking, and what if I sleep through the alarm and miss my flight? It doesn’t bear thinking about, but my sleeping brain chews over it, and wakes me every half hour to check the clock.
The yipe of the alarm was a welcome sound in a way. I had thought that I’d get up, check my email, potter around, have breakfast, but no, everybody else was awake and packed and waiting for me to get my act together. So we hit the airport early, an hour or more before the scheduled time, made sure at checkin that we had window seats (for my daughter and I – the rest of the family doesn’t care to fly with their noses pressed against the glass) and that our luggage would go all the way through to Hong Kong, without having to be tended to in transit.
I was a little worried, because the instructions for the Dash-8 propliner to Sydney said one bag of twenty kilos for each passenger, and I had over sixty kilos spread over four bags. Luckily my elite status gives me some perks, and it seems that overloading the plane is one of them.
Someone’s visiting from the USA, it seems, with a 737, 747 and 757 all in official livery lined up at the VIP terminal. The 747 is the same aircraft that turns into Air Force One with the president aboard, but I’m sure we’d know if Bush was in town.
Lake George, north of Canberra, is all but empty of water. It’s just a vast flat plain at the moment. Even when it’s full, it’s only about a metre deep. The tops of fencelines poke above the water. But now it’s a dappled plain of grass and dried mud. Beyond, the eastward land is gleaming with hundreds of farm dams, and further yet the Pacific is golden in the morning sun.
Rugged gorges carved through ancient sandstone as we neared Sydney, and the captain asked the cabin staff to prepare for landing while they still scrambled to serve the long cabin. It’s not a long flight. Below, dramatic cliffs and scarps clad in green bushland, blending into the rolling green hobby farms, studs, weekenders and greenhouses of the Southern Tablelands. Above, a muesli biscuit with a million calories, strawberry yoghurt and airline coffee.
Sydney before we know it, and we make a long loop around to the north. Every neighbourhood oval is packed with cricketers, it seems. Too high to catch the action, but the pattern of white-clad players against green grass is unmistakable.
Lower we go, over the industrial suburbs of the south, and with a thump, we’re down at Kingsford Smith, rolling up to the domestic terminal. Shuttle bus across to the international terminal, and we pass close behind Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380, the massive double decker airliner waiting to make its daily flagship run to Singapore. There’s only one in service at the moment, and it shuttles between Sydney and Singapore like a bead on a string, but in years to come our skies will be covered in these enormous aircraft. Qantas gets their first next year, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the extra space.
Daughter and I are let into the First lounge. I’d been hoping to get the whole family in, but the gate guardians don’t bend that far. I’m allowed one guest here, so Kerri takes our son down to the Business Lounge, where she will drink a cup of skim latte and my son will raid the buffet.
Upstairs, we have a panoramic view over the runways, and we smile with delight whenever a plane comes in. A sit down breakfast, served by an immaculate waiter. My plate had six vine-ripened cherry tomatoes on the side, the sort they have in heaven. Pop them under your tongue and your mouth fills with bliss. A clear blue sky, the silhouette of Sydney’s downtown buildings on the horizon, and the prospect of a long flight and holiday ahead of me, I was in heaven.
We filled in time in the library until it was time to leave. Shelves full of coffee table books. I found a text on Art Deco, and my daughter picked up one on wildlife photography, coincidentally the book of the exhibition I’d seen in London last year. A whole room full of the most striking images, and here it was again in condensed format.
I’ll be there again in two months; the BookCrossing Convention is venued at Kensington in Imperial College, just down the street from the Natural History Museum. Maybe they’ll have a new exhibition to thrill me.
We reluctantly pick up our carryons, leaving heaven to a new set of sinful indulgers, collect the rest of the family from the lounge downstairs, and follow a long pier out to the gate lounge. Our jumbo is just being parked, and there’s some delay, while we survey the other passengers. Apart from the obvious tourists, there are any number of ethnic Chinese. Sydney is quite cosmopolitan these days, and sometimes it seems that half of Hong Kong lives here. Qantas has put on their Chinese-speaking flight attendants for this run, as well as the flight to Shanghai loading at the next gate.
The days of Australia as an outpost of stolid British colonialism are long gone. We’ve got people from all over, and it’s like I always say; you want to see the Australia of tomorrow, look at the taxidrivers of today.
One young mother has a baby strapped on in a frontpack. “Imagine sitting for eight hours like that in Economy Class,” I say, glad that I have no children.
“Yes,” says my son, eying the yummy mummy, “but the baby is travelling First Class.”
We board, settle ourselves, and soon we are hurtling down the runway, up into that clear blue sky, a final rush of golden beaches and dramatic cliffs, and then civilisation gradually dwindles away to an occasional red dirt road spearing through an enormous dry continent.
I was hitting 2001:a space odyssey on the “Classics” movie channel when we began our descent over the South China Sea. Alien contact in unforgettable images, soaring music and banal dialogue. “What's that? Chicken?” “Something like that. Tastes the same anyway.”
I have my guide out as we curve around the end of Lantau Island and line up on manmade Chek Lap Kok. I’m trying to get a feel for Hong Kong’s geography, and I’m beginning to make sense out of the jumble of islands and mountains and bays.
Hong Kong’s airport is new and modern and enormous, a contrast in every way to the cramped old Kai Tak, where airliners made a steep righthand turn against a mountain, dropped down through a valley of apartment towers, and made a windy landing out into the harbour.
Here we land, make a short taxi, and a long walk to the immigration hall. This is my fifth visit, but the first time I’ve left transit. Another set of stamps for my passport, and then we are out, looking for the best way of getting to our hotel. Spoilt for choice, actually, but in the end we take a taxi, four of us and our luggage in a bright red Toyota Crown.
The driver speaks English, more or less, and his cabin is full of equipment, fastened onto the dashboard and the sunvisors, suckered onto the windscreen. There’s even a little toy koala hanging on, and I learn that he has been a taxi driver in Sydney, where his children live.
We travel a wide highway over impressive bridges and through tunnels. As far as I can tell, he’s taking us an efficient way, and I’m very happy with the ride. There’s two hotels with the same name, and he checks the right one, dropping us off at West Central, rather than Wan Chai. I add a tip to the impressive fare – impressive in Hong Kong Dollars, that is, each one worth about fifteen Aussie cents, and we checkin to our adjoining rooms.
It’s been a long day, and we’re soon abed.
I interrupted the movie to call up the map on my seatback entertainment screen. Atonement, I think it was, a tale of passion and deceit in 1930s England, extremely well down, and certainly worth this second look. After noting that the temperature outside in English and Chinese was forty below zero on a sunny day, I found the name of the place. Philippines, as I’d guessed, and the name matched its exoticity.
I’d heard of Zamboanga, and there it was, under my eyes for a few moments before the big jet engine on the wing swallowed it up.
I’d kind of hoped that I could look down and see a big white ship slicing a creamy path through the tropical blue, but no, that was too much to hope for. We’ll see our cruiseliner in a few days when she pulls into Hong Kong.
It’s rare that I travel overseas with my wife, and even rarer to take my children. “You have no children!” insists my daughter, and I nod in agreement. There are now four adults in my closest family, and no children. In due course, I imagine, there will be kids again, but this time it will be other who will worry over them for years on end.
But here is my wife beside me, lost in some dreadful tale of alien invasion while I look out on seas where pirate captains stroked their dangling moustaches, and further back in the plane my son and daughter are probably exploring the strange wastelands of their entertainment systems. Manga Monkeys Mutilate Manhattan, or possibly Kath and Kim.
Usually my travels take me whizzing around the world. Twenty flights in twenty days, just me and seventy kilos of luggage. I gallop around airports, I sleep when I want, and if my taxidriver time patterns see me wake in the middle of the night, why but I can turn on all the lights and the TV, make coffee, and have a party on the internet.
So if there’s a few mistakes in spelling here and ther, please forgive me. It’s four in the morning and I’m quietly tapping away at my laptop in the dimness, my screen turned down to a bare glow.
Four in yesterday’s morning, and I was dozing fitfully in Canberra. I never sleep well the night before a big trip. There’s always things I need to do on waking, and what if I sleep through the alarm and miss my flight? It doesn’t bear thinking about, but my sleeping brain chews over it, and wakes me every half hour to check the clock.
The yipe of the alarm was a welcome sound in a way. I had thought that I’d get up, check my email, potter around, have breakfast, but no, everybody else was awake and packed and waiting for me to get my act together. So we hit the airport early, an hour or more before the scheduled time, made sure at checkin that we had window seats (for my daughter and I – the rest of the family doesn’t care to fly with their noses pressed against the glass) and that our luggage would go all the way through to Hong Kong, without having to be tended to in transit.
I was a little worried, because the instructions for the Dash-8 propliner to Sydney said one bag of twenty kilos for each passenger, and I had over sixty kilos spread over four bags. Luckily my elite status gives me some perks, and it seems that overloading the plane is one of them.
Someone’s visiting from the USA, it seems, with a 737, 747 and 757 all in official livery lined up at the VIP terminal. The 747 is the same aircraft that turns into Air Force One with the president aboard, but I’m sure we’d know if Bush was in town.
Lake George, north of Canberra, is all but empty of water. It’s just a vast flat plain at the moment. Even when it’s full, it’s only about a metre deep. The tops of fencelines poke above the water. But now it’s a dappled plain of grass and dried mud. Beyond, the eastward land is gleaming with hundreds of farm dams, and further yet the Pacific is golden in the morning sun.
Rugged gorges carved through ancient sandstone as we neared Sydney, and the captain asked the cabin staff to prepare for landing while they still scrambled to serve the long cabin. It’s not a long flight. Below, dramatic cliffs and scarps clad in green bushland, blending into the rolling green hobby farms, studs, weekenders and greenhouses of the Southern Tablelands. Above, a muesli biscuit with a million calories, strawberry yoghurt and airline coffee.
Sydney before we know it, and we make a long loop around to the north. Every neighbourhood oval is packed with cricketers, it seems. Too high to catch the action, but the pattern of white-clad players against green grass is unmistakable.
Lower we go, over the industrial suburbs of the south, and with a thump, we’re down at Kingsford Smith, rolling up to the domestic terminal. Shuttle bus across to the international terminal, and we pass close behind Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380, the massive double decker airliner waiting to make its daily flagship run to Singapore. There’s only one in service at the moment, and it shuttles between Sydney and Singapore like a bead on a string, but in years to come our skies will be covered in these enormous aircraft. Qantas gets their first next year, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the extra space.
Daughter and I are let into the First lounge. I’d been hoping to get the whole family in, but the gate guardians don’t bend that far. I’m allowed one guest here, so Kerri takes our son down to the Business Lounge, where she will drink a cup of skim latte and my son will raid the buffet.
Upstairs, we have a panoramic view over the runways, and we smile with delight whenever a plane comes in. A sit down breakfast, served by an immaculate waiter. My plate had six vine-ripened cherry tomatoes on the side, the sort they have in heaven. Pop them under your tongue and your mouth fills with bliss. A clear blue sky, the silhouette of Sydney’s downtown buildings on the horizon, and the prospect of a long flight and holiday ahead of me, I was in heaven.
We filled in time in the library until it was time to leave. Shelves full of coffee table books. I found a text on Art Deco, and my daughter picked up one on wildlife photography, coincidentally the book of the exhibition I’d seen in London last year. A whole room full of the most striking images, and here it was again in condensed format.
I’ll be there again in two months; the BookCrossing Convention is venued at Kensington in Imperial College, just down the street from the Natural History Museum. Maybe they’ll have a new exhibition to thrill me.
We reluctantly pick up our carryons, leaving heaven to a new set of sinful indulgers, collect the rest of the family from the lounge downstairs, and follow a long pier out to the gate lounge. Our jumbo is just being parked, and there’s some delay, while we survey the other passengers. Apart from the obvious tourists, there are any number of ethnic Chinese. Sydney is quite cosmopolitan these days, and sometimes it seems that half of Hong Kong lives here. Qantas has put on their Chinese-speaking flight attendants for this run, as well as the flight to Shanghai loading at the next gate.
The days of Australia as an outpost of stolid British colonialism are long gone. We’ve got people from all over, and it’s like I always say; you want to see the Australia of tomorrow, look at the taxidrivers of today.
One young mother has a baby strapped on in a frontpack. “Imagine sitting for eight hours like that in Economy Class,” I say, glad that I have no children.
“Yes,” says my son, eying the yummy mummy, “but the baby is travelling First Class.”
We board, settle ourselves, and soon we are hurtling down the runway, up into that clear blue sky, a final rush of golden beaches and dramatic cliffs, and then civilisation gradually dwindles away to an occasional red dirt road spearing through an enormous dry continent.
I was hitting 2001:a space odyssey on the “Classics” movie channel when we began our descent over the South China Sea. Alien contact in unforgettable images, soaring music and banal dialogue. “What's that? Chicken?” “Something like that. Tastes the same anyway.”
I have my guide out as we curve around the end of Lantau Island and line up on manmade Chek Lap Kok. I’m trying to get a feel for Hong Kong’s geography, and I’m beginning to make sense out of the jumble of islands and mountains and bays.
Hong Kong’s airport is new and modern and enormous, a contrast in every way to the cramped old Kai Tak, where airliners made a steep righthand turn against a mountain, dropped down through a valley of apartment towers, and made a windy landing out into the harbour.
Here we land, make a short taxi, and a long walk to the immigration hall. This is my fifth visit, but the first time I’ve left transit. Another set of stamps for my passport, and then we are out, looking for the best way of getting to our hotel. Spoilt for choice, actually, but in the end we take a taxi, four of us and our luggage in a bright red Toyota Crown.
The driver speaks English, more or less, and his cabin is full of equipment, fastened onto the dashboard and the sunvisors, suckered onto the windscreen. There’s even a little toy koala hanging on, and I learn that he has been a taxi driver in Sydney, where his children live.
We travel a wide highway over impressive bridges and through tunnels. As far as I can tell, he’s taking us an efficient way, and I’m very happy with the ride. There’s two hotels with the same name, and he checks the right one, dropping us off at West Central, rather than Wan Chai. I add a tip to the impressive fare – impressive in Hong Kong Dollars, that is, each one worth about fifteen Aussie cents, and we checkin to our adjoining rooms.
It’s been a long day, and we’re soon abed.
