My first visit to Australia

Brisbane River from the University

Well, I know I am posting this a bit late. I visited Australia (for that matter any other country) in 2004. Yes, I know it is quite a long time before. But still, I thought I will share this with you. As soon as it was confirmed that I will be flying to Brisbane, Australia my whole family was very happy, of course. I was very scared in the beginning, but things smoothened out gradually. I am talking about how to handle situations in foreign places. To start with, I don't have much exposure to Australian accent, since most of the time we see Hollywood movies, which have a Yankee accent. To me all accents seemed the same, that's what I used to think. Talking about accents may be racist, but that's another story to tell as well. Maybe in next blog.

The D-day arrived. I was in the airport with my luggage and my family. As I said before that this was my first experience to travel alone to abroad that too on an aeroplane!!! The flight path was from Chennai to Bangkok to Brisbane. After saying goodbye with moist eyes, I took my boarding pass and went to security immediately. Later on, I realized that I could have spent some more time with my family before going into the security as they had tickets that allowed them to stay for an hour or so inside the airport. In anycase, I had to wait for an hour till we boarded the flight.

The guy sitting next to me was a travel agent in Chennai, and guesses it right that it was my first flight outside India. (I was feeling jittery because the last time I took a flight for travel was during my 7th standard..eons ago!!!) We had a small chat and after some time I started enjoying the show they showed on the screen and happy to see pretty Thai airhostesses.

When the flight landed at Bangkok (now the old airport) it was 5AM and I had no clue what to do next. I asked a lot of people for directions and finally dawned on me that my travel agent had booked a hotel room for me in the city and didnt even bother to tell me that one needs a visa to enter inside Bangkok. There I was making a fool of myself. Then I pleaded with the airport staff and she was very considerate enough to transfer my hotel booking to the accomodation inside the terminal itself. The last thing I remember after I locked the room was I fell on the bed and slept for good 5 hours straight.

I had my bath and was very fresh. Now what? Lets see the airport since we couldnt see the city. Atleast I will treat my eyes with the airport pleasures. The first thing that hit my senses was the crude smell of southeast asian food to which I was never exposed. I saw one T-shirt that had a beautiful imprint of an elephant with golden tusks. It was way too expensive. I decide to window shop from then on. Getting hungry I bought some snacks that I verified more than twice that it was vegetarian and went to my room, saw some thai channels and dozed off again.

The connecting flight was at 11:30 PM. Imagine stuck inside the aiport for 18 hrs and nothing else to do other than seeing other blank faces and smelling fish everywhere. Finally I boarded the flight and was happy to see a change in environment. Again I had to curse my travel agent, the reason being he didn't fix my meal preferences and guess what there was no vegetarian available for breakfast. After 8 hours of gruelling travel, sitting next to a plump woman who had difficulties in fitting into an economoy seat, we landed in Brisbane.

The temperature was hot and thats when I remembered that the climate pattern in different. SO it was summer whereas in Delhi it was winter still. The first thing that struck me when we were in the car was the vast expanse of the place. My supervisor had volunteered to pick me up and he was mentioning various things on the way to the university. I started liking Birsbane already.

The Indian guys with whom I was staying temporarily had all gone to the university for their daily work. I was having doem food when I heard a knock on the door and there was a guy standing at the door and when I opened it, he seemed confused and asked if it was the right door number. Guess what he was one of the guys of the apartment and I mistook him for some stranger who has knocked the wrong door. We all had a good laugh when everyone had returned back.

One of the things that I can never forget was me stepping on a snake (a python to be precise) on the way to the supermarket. I was screaming and I ran back to the house and my friend jokingly asked if I saw a snake. I was quite terrified. This happened like a week after I arrived in brisbane.
One day early morning, I was woken up by the noise of someone laughing loudly. I thought some drunk guy is laughing like this, but I couldn't see anyone. Thinking it as a "Bramai" of my mind I ignored it. Later on, I realized that it was the sound of Kookaburra bird and people call it as a the "laugh of Kookaburra"!!! From then on I was on the lookout for a Kookaburra so that I can laugh back at it. Anyway it never happened.

The most enjoyable part was my colleague at the university took me to sailing and it was fun. We did camping in tents, which I had never done in my life before. Having bonfire and talking and drinking all night long was quite an experience. I used to enjoy the lunch breaks we had near the lake with water hen and big lizards that enjoyed my indian food. :)

This lizard about 2 foot long loved my cooking!!!

This was not my only experience with Australia. Infact, in my second trip in 2006 I visited more places. Will write in detail in next post.