This day arrived faster than I could ever imagine- suddenly it was our last morning in the UK (for a long time), ‘snap’ our last hour, ‘snap’ we were saying those tearful goodbyes and Emily was here to take us to Newcastle airport, ‘snap’ we were on the first plane!
Nabeela was excited about it and also confused, which I was expecting. She has had some unusual few weeks- saying bye to many different people, having a party, meeting new people and then saying bye to them, living in different houses and with several different people and picking up on the stresses and strains that we were feeling. She has held up amazingly well when I think about it.
By the time our first plane touched down in Heathrow Nabeela was shouting ‘fun!’ and bouncing around happily. Initially getting up to board the plane I had let her see and feel my fear and she had reacted vocally to this saying, ‘frightened’, but I quickly pushed those feelings deep down (who says bottling it up is bad!?) and Nabeela relaxed instantly and with wide-eyed excitement she boarded the plane happily, with just a tinge of apprehension, when I let my fears bubble up.
The flights all went as smoothly as could be expected, except for the airline mucking up our meals repeatedly. For one of my vegetarian meals I was served chicken, another we were given cheese and another only one of us was allowed to eat! Malaysia airlines are not acceptable and I would prefer not to fly with them again!
Nabeela slept for the longest flight and was only awake during take-off and landing which she seemed to be quite excited about. The flight to Adelaide was a little more stressful and Nabeela would not sleep, despite it being dark. By the time we came to land she was very agitated from being made to sit still on my knee and became quite vocal about it! The combined mixture of exhaustion and being cooped up in a tin box made her an unhappy little girl and by the time we debarked she was tearful and vibrating with stressed energy. The queue for passports was ridiculous and we wouldn’t have got through it if a staff member hadn’t allowed us to go through early. We were very grateful for this and thought our troubles were over until it came time for picking up our bags!
The carousel happily spat out Nabeela’s bag and my own, and we waited patiently for Ryan’s to meander around. By the time there were just two lonely looking bags left, riding aimlessly around and around we had a feeling that Ryan’s probably wasn’t coming out too.
This meant we were standing around for another couple hours waiting for a staff member to be ready to see to us and sort out the problem. Thankfully Nabeela had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep in the sling, so at least we didn’t have to worry about her! Ryan’s bag was still in London according to the woman he spoke to, who helpfully gave us some money for our troubles and promised the bag would be with us by the following day (which it was!)
Our problems weren’t over yet, despite being so fatigued we could barely stand we had to find our way into the city centre and back out again, on our way to Cudlee Creek. We paid the exorbitant price for a taxi into the CBD and had a relaxed, but expensive breakfast. Our next hurdle was to find a bus (or several) to Cudlee Creek.
After numerous conflicting directions and a several hour wait we found ourselves on a bus to Tea Tree Plaza, where we had to get another bus on to our accommodation. This bus was a little local one and my travel sickness has popped its ugly head up again since getting on it a few times!
Cudlee Creek is a rustic and somewhat aging park, with large gum trees interspersed between pretty bush-land and open grassy areas. There is a slow moving river running through the park on its way to Adelaide city and the buildings have all seen better days. It seems to be the height of country-quaint and most people we have met so far have been friendly, if a little stressed.
We have spent the last few days trying to keep up with the jetlag. Many days have been interspersed with random naps, extra long sleeps, 4am wake-ups and 5pm night-times. But we are slowly getting there!
The weather is freezing! Mornings (particularly at 4am when it’s still dark, the birds haven’t even awoken!) are the worst and I have been wearing more than I usually do in the UK. Typical really, I was expecting lovely spring weather and have, instead, been confronted with drizzle, icy-cold nights and frozen toes! We are in the hills, so a move to the coast is in order- when we finally get this van we’re looking for!
So it’s just a van on the cards now. We’re looking at one tomorrow and hopefully we will find ourselves the proud owners of a lovely set of wheels and house combined, soon!
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