Family to family with family

My sister has been visiting over the weekend. She and her husband and two of the sweetest, most engaging young boys you could imagine. Young K has an interest in Lego, and as it happened I had a couple of boxloads of it left over, which kept the lads busy for much of the time.

Such a delight to catch up with family. My sister lives interstate, and we don't see as much of each other as we should. With her two youngsters, I'm reminded that we're on an escalator; it doesn't seem all that long ago that we were kids together, but here I am, a distant uncle with weird hobbies and a truckload of Lego.

Perhaps I was a little distracted on the weekend. I'd left several tasks undone in my last week of seven night shifts and I was counting on the free time to book a hotel in Tokyo and travel to and from Edinburgh. This worked out longer and more difficult than it should have, with wonky internet and sites that shut down or kicked me out. Not to mention the difficulty of not knowing Tokyo well at all.

But eventually I sorted it out, hugged my guests goodbye, packed up my bags and got my wife to deliver DD and I to the airport.

We're off around the world, my daughter and I. Tokyo, London, Edinburgh, Washington DC, New York, an evening in Hong Kong, and then five days in Rockhampton, for the annual family get-together. I'll see all my siblings, my parents, the younger generations, and it will be pure heaven.

1. Canberra-Sydney

Friday 28 July 2009
Canberra to Sydney
QF562 Boeing B734 VH-TJW “Strahan”
Seats 13D/F
Scheduled: 1655
Boarding: 1635 (Gate 13)
Pushback: 1656
Takeoff: 1702 (to the north)
Descent: 1716 (Sydney time, same as Canberra)
Landing: 1729 (from the south)
Gate: 1737 (Gate 8)

Canberra’s a funny old place. All roundabouts, freeways and parkland suburbs. Home of the national government, it’s crammed full of public servants, each one less exciting than the last, but from the way the rest of the country talks about us, you’d think we Canberra folk were all as mad as Sydney cabbies.

This is because the only people in Canberra making headlines are the politicians, and the funny thing is that they are elected by the rest of the country to come here. So don’t blame us for your own errors, okay?

There’s not words enough to describe the antics that politicians get up to. Hand them the steering wheel, a bottomless government credit card and an election platform consisting mostly of ridiculous promises and empty slogans, and they make any cabbie look sane.

We Canberrans elect four locals to the federal parliament, and they, selected by an electorate consisting largely of public servants, are the only boring chooks in the whole shed.

This doesn’t follow for the local government, for some reason. We elect enough nuts, flakes and fruits to make a bowl of breakfast cereal, and the nuttiest noodle gets to be Chief Minister. They all have their odd notions. We had one who was convinced that someone was putting too much fluoride in the water. He was from the Sun-Ripened Warm Tomatoes Party, and no, I’m not kidding you about that name.

He was replaced by a lady who hated to be seen by the public. She demanded a private garage with a roll-a-door so that she could drive in, roll the door down and nobody would see her getting out of her limo. She chain-smoked, and because smoking wasn’t allowed in government buildings, she wanted a private smoking balcony. With screens and blinds so that the public couldn’t see her.

She got tossed out when the voters had a chance, and her replacement was the exact opposite – an extrovert who loved nothing better than a good photo opportunity and a chance to dress up in silly hats. When the local brothels had an open day – and, no, this is fair dinkum – she was on the front page the next day leaning against the open door of the Purple Pussy in Fyshwick.

She got a good run, but after a series of drunken sex romps, the other guys had a chance, and we got a chief minister who spent half the territory budget on a one lane freeway that everybody hated. “The Gungahlin Drive Extension?” people will say, “Geez, but don’t get me started on that.”

And then they’ll talk for the whole taxi ride about how stupid it is and if they are one of the poor unfortunates who live beside the beautifully-engineered road, they’ll whinge about the ridiculous access arrangements.

The Chief Minister balanced the budget by closing schools and libraries, dressed the disaster up with public artworks made of logs and rocks and girders, until nobody needed to question his sanity. They knew.

I love Canberra. Don’t get me wrong. It’s my favorite city in all the world. But I like to get away once in a while.

My darling wife dropped us off near the terminal at Canberra International Airport. We’ve got a grand name for a terminal with two baggage carousels and no international flights.

I was packing light for this trip, with forty kilos of baggage, and my daughter a quarter of that. I was planning on dropping off all of the books that made up half the weight, and giving away the chocolate biscuits that made up the other half. My daughter, on the other hand, had planned the trip around shopping, and we’d likely have to hire another plane to get us home again.

The Business Lounge is a recent addition to Canberra. The politicians get membership of the Chairmans’ Lounge, the public servants get the regular Qantas Club, and the elite travelers like me have the Business Lounge, where the champagne isn’t imported, but it’s better than the cider they serve in the club.

I only have elite status because I hang out on the internet discussion boards where the airline geeks dissect the membership levels and swap tricks for squeezing out insane amounts of airmiles from ridiculous itineraries.

I dress up for flying in green cargo pants, a plastic belt, and more spacesaving, weightsaving gadgets than I can haul around. All around me are silver-haired gents in business suits, and I’m a night cabbie. I like this.

This trip I’ve got my daughter with me. I had enough airmiles to go around the world up the front end of the aircraft, but that was also enough for two tickets at the back of the bus, and as she likes air travel as much as I do, it didn’t need much thinking to offer her a half share in a two-week trip around the world’s great cities. Sure, I might have to wedge myself into ridiculously cramped seats and eat reconstituted rice balls washed down by fizzy chardonnay, but I’d get the pleasure of the company of a beautiful young woman who also happens to be an airline geek. Seeing a familiar city through fresh eyes and having a travel companion who also caresses the aluminium skin of the plane on entry is a rare treat.

We had just enough time for a glass of local champagne in the Business Lounge. It’s a rare female who makes it in here amongst the lobbyists and captains of graft. Even rarer to see a night cabbie.

I’m not much to look at, I guess, but I walk in beauty. My city is beautiful in its parkland setting, ornamental lake reflecting the background of mountains, grand buildings floodlit in splendour, and long avenues of autumn trees making April golden and September green with promise.

My family fills me with happiness, and my passengers entertain me in the long night hours, singing along to Abba or Dire Straits.

I’m a lucky man.

We had seats over the wing, preallocated together. I gave my daughter the window, and let me note that this is a big sacrifice for a man who leaves a noseprint on every plane window, and when nobody showed up for the aisle seat, I moved over to that, giving us three seats to sprawl over. Not quite Business Class, especially when they handed out the inflight service, but it’s nice to have a morsel of free space.

We took off to the north, aiming directly for Sydney, where we rolled in from the south. Wheels up to puff of smoke on Sydney tarmac, it was twenty-seven minutes, and the cabin crew deserved gold for their performance in the cabin service Olympics.

It was golden sunset off to the west above a layer of cloud. A smiling silver moon came out before we dived back under the overcast, flight attendants scrambling to retrieve plastic cups and empty pretzel packets. Dark damp tarmac shining under floodlights, the city skyscrapers off in the distance climbing lights into a glowing sky. Huge finned shapes of fellow airliners taxiing in, and finally a chime of seatbelts off and a scramble for the exit.