From A Land Down Under #1: Blighty to Cairns

In which we make it to the other side of the world, though not without mishap...

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Friday 30th May

* Having ensured I don't have any sharp items of stationery secreted in my hand luggage this time, I'm then told off for trying to walk through customs with said rucksack still on my back. All of which Jenni finds very amusing - until she's pulled up for absent-mindedly leaving a 500ml bottle of water in her bag, that is.

* Waiting around for flights at airports seems to induce a very particular kind of boredom, one which leads you to pass the time gawping at £6000 bottles of whisky. Even a quick glance over the section about Oz's East Coast in what is to become our Bible for the next two weeks, 'The Lonely Planet Guide to Australia', offers little cheer: "You might do it in a fortnight, but what a waste - take a month or two and chill out". While I lament the fact that the brevity of our stay will unfortunately rule out visits to such wonderfully named places as Wagga Wagga, Gympie and Yorkey's Knob, Jenni tries to console me with the prospect of what I WILL get to see: "You'll be looking at a signpost and it'll be covered with geckos"...

Saturday 31st May

* The whole day is swallowed up in a black hole of travel hellishness. The food is barely edible and I'm not sure which is most irritating: the restless girl thrashing about in the seat in front or the pungent aroma of cheesy feet wafting over from behind. My personal lowlight is when, after four miniature bottles of red strategically consumed to dull the sense of aggravation, I clamber out of my seat only for my knee to come into forceful contact with the head of a sleeping teenage girl which has lolled over the armrest and into the aisle.

* During the brief stop-off in Singapore, we take the opportunity to explore the airport's rooftop cactus garden. The humidity is intense, though, and it's something of a relief to be back inside the air-conditioned glass and steel cocoon.

* Hurrah! Football chat with the bloke sat next to us, an Aussie who's lived in London for seven years but is returning home to buy a house. Turns out he's good friends with Everton Socceroo Tim Cahill - ah, best hastily backtrack on my digs about our very own Mark Viduka's pie-eating portliness in case he knows him too. The inflight entertainment is also a source of solace - 'The Bucket List' is largely heartstring-tugging cliche beneath what you'd expect from both its stars, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, but at least the installment of Jersey comedian Will Smith's Radio 4 series 'The Tao Of Bergerac' is moderately amusing, and 'Life In Cold Blood' is handy preparation for some of what we'll come face-to-face with once we arrive (if we ever arrive) in Australia.

Sunday 1st June

* The first thing we see upon arriving on the ground on the other side of the world? The golden arches. There's globalisation for you.

* The cards we have to fill in for presentation to passport control on arrival ask you to declare whether you have any criminal convictions. This being Australia, presumably that's to weed out those who don't so they can be sent back from whence they came? We sneak our way in anyway.

* Our connecting flight from Sydney to Cairns is cancelled, but we've been booked on a slightly later flight instead. Not a problem, you might imagine, but you'd be wrong. The original flight was classified as international, but the latter's domestic, and somewhere along the line our bags are lost. We rush from pillar to post, or rather carousel to carousel, in the increasingly forlorn hope that they might yet turn up, while officials from British Airways and Qantas expertly deny responsibility. The two airlines are "One World Alliance partners", or so we've been led to believe - partners they may be, but this is like being stuck in the middle of a squabbling, buck-passing, soon-to-be-divorced couple. In the end, we're advised to take the three hour flight to Cairns and wait for our luggage to turn up there. It takes a huge leap of faith, but we haven't got much option other than to go ahead and cheerfully agree with the Qantas employee on the check-in desk that yes we are travelling rather light today, aren't we?

* By the time we arrive in Cairns our hopes have rallied - surely our bags will have made it onto the plane and we'll be able to laugh it all off? But no, they haven't, and I'm nearly 10,000 miles from home with only the sweaty slept-in clothes I'm stood in. Actually, that's not strictly true - the sympathetic woman on the Qantas desk gives us emergency packs, which she explains contain "daggy T-shirts". Surprisingly, these don't bear the slogan "Qantas lost my luggage and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". They do however have the Qantas logo emblazoned on them - quite the feat of marketing chutzpah, that one, getting free advertising from customers who are mightily disgruntled with you. The packs also contain washing powder - further evidence of someone with a warped sense of humour.

* At least there's a warm "G'day" by way of a greeting from the bloke at the taxi rank. Surely he's just putting that on for the benefit of us tourists?

* After all the morning's trauma, we're in need of an oasis - and our first hostel, Travellers Oasis, certainly fits the bill. Smart, clean and painted in vibrant colours, it's perfect. Not realising that swimming pools are the norm even for hostels in Australia, I wonder if this kind of thing and the weather are why locals seem to pronounce the place "Cannes".





* Even when shopping for cheap stop-gap essentials, you have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm sorry but I refuse to buy boxer shorts decorated with wolves. Sticking to principles restricts my choice somewhat, given the bizarre popularity of "budgie smugglers" over here, which are themselves restrictive in a rather unpleasantly undignified way. For her part, Jenni plays the sympathy card and leaves one department store with a sackful of free cosmetics thanks to a lovely employee whose parents in a moment of temporary insanity bestowed upon her the name Trilby. Of course it's sod's law that immediately upon arriving back at the hostel we discover our bags have been located and will be hotfooting it up to us on a flight later in the evening...

* The member of staff on duty, Jon, may just be Wrexham's greatest export. Not only does he take up over three hours of his time to help us plan and book large portions of our holiday, he shows great patience in doing so and even hands out beers to give us strength for the ongoing organisational operation. Jenni's prediction, meanwhile, comes true: the office is crawling with small scampering geckos.

* Sustenance is sought at Rattle & Hum, a U2-themed bar/restaurant where the pizzas are made up to look like the band members' faces (Adam Clayton was particularly tasty) and the cocktails make you power-crazed and determined to hob-nob with world leaders under the auspices of saving the world. No, not really. Their pizzas are good, though.

* Coincidences don't come much bigger than wandering around a Night Owl in Cairns looking for Violet Crumbles (substandard Crunchies, in case you're wondering) and bumping into a friend you know from Aston who you've not seen since January and who's since moved to Brighton. OK, so Kirsten's Australian, and we knew she was in Sydney two weeks earlier, but here she and her boyfriend Michael are, having stayed on and come up from Sydney on a whim. The shock is even greater for them - they didn't even know we were planning on coming over. Another drink is most definitely in order, during which time Kirsten tells us about her initial flatshare in Brighton living with an ambitious and rogueish priest with a semi-neurotic ex-wife and Quaker girlfriend who openly viewed his job as nothing but a nine-to-five. Not quite as obviously sitcom material as another friend's recent predicament, sharing a house in St Albans with a racist homophobic Pole and a gay Indian (and his boyfriend), but pretty close. After that, it's back to the hostel for more reunions - us with our bags, and heads with pillows.

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Next time: Cape Tribulation and Cairns featuring amongst other things 6ft birds, motormouth Sheilas and licking ants' arses.