It begins

Apparently travel teaches you things about yourself. The first lesson I learnt is that I am incapable of sleeping on planes. Before I embarked on this trip, my personal record for longest amount of time spent without any sleep was something like 46 hours. I’m not glad to say that I’ve well and truly broken that record now: 63 hours (or the closest approximation anyway) without any dedicated REM sleep. I tried, and I sort of “napped”, but I wouldn’t call it sleep.

Getting to Sydney airport and moving through it was a bit of an adventure in itself. My father chose to employ his own brand of navigatory technique (ie: ignoring helpful signs and instead peering into the darkness ahead going “But where do we turn??”) in an attempt to find the airport parking area, and we ended up circumnavigating the parking lot several times without actually entering it. This, of course, raised the blood pressure of all involved, especially when Dad tried to drive into the parking area via the pedestrian-only access path.

We finally managed to park without killing any hapless pedestrians and proceeded to bid two very emotional farewells: first, to my luggage at the check-in desk, and the second, to my parents before going through to customs (there were many tears). Going through security, I was preparing for a lengthy interrogation as to why I was carrying a box full of hypodermic needles in my carry-on. Brandishing my doctor’s letter like a shield, I approached the security guard:

“Hi,” I confessed nervously, “I have a box of hypodermic needles to declare?”

He shrugged, bored. “You can have ‘em.”

Seems everyone was lying when they said security was strict about that sort of thing – and absolutely no one cared at Heathrow when I arrived either. I didn’t even need to go through customs at all there. Success!

At last, I was on the plane (and sitting in my upgraded-to-exit-row seat – thank you Emirates!), craning my head to stare out the window at the glittering lights of early morning Sydney. All the stressing and months of planning, and I was finally squeezed into an airplane seat, flying to an entirely different hemisphere for the first time in my life.