Trip to Australia, 2010 – 2011

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Before the children started school in Poland, we decided to take them to Australia for six months to improve their English and spend time with my parents and friends. During that time I was smart and organised enough to send group letters to friends and relatives in Poland, keeping them up-to-date with our trip. Now going back to these letters it is a true pleasure to read long-forgotten details of our special time there, and I have decided to upload a summary to this blog.

December – January

Our big family voyage does not get off to an easy start. Since my husband spent the week before the trip on business in both Cairo and Algiers, I spent some time on our airport’s arrivals and departures website. This way I noticed that the flight we were taking to Vienna (6:20 pm) had been regularly cancelled or delayed due to the weather. On the day we are leaving everything looks fine until the last minute when, at 6:25, the flight is cancelled and we are sent home with packed bags, the children (age 3.5 and 5.5), and a lost connection to Australia that had been reserved sixth months earlier as seats were already being booked out (Christmas time is always busy).

In typical Polish fashion, a queue of people from three cancelled flights is being serviced by one person. With small kids in tow, amid a sea of protests, we are led to the front of the line. Just changing our flights takes 40 minutes. Nasty. But we are given seats for the following day and I am able to launder S’s underpants that he managed to wet while still in Kraków, and I’d only packed one spare pair of pants and two pairs of undies as he had not peed his pants in ages!

We board the first of our two long-haul flights while hearing of worse tales of being sent home from the airport and missed flights. In business class the children are quickly able to sleep in the comfortable seats and we enjoy a delicious pasta and prawn dish and some snoozing. After a nine-hour flight we have three hours at Bangkok airport. We head quickly for the Business Lounge, which has amazing food (including spicy Thai dumplings in flaky pastry and fresh melon and pineapple). The charming Thai hostesses are thrilled at the sight of the children and I am even more thrilled when one of them says: “Aren’t you wonderful? We have a special room for you.” And, true to her word, in the middle of the Business Lounge, lies a colourful playroom for the youngest passengers. Great thinking because not only are the children happy and busy, but they don’t disrupt other, resting passengers, which are predominantly businessmen in the midst of their work-related travels. The playing doesn’t go all that smoothly, of course, with Szymus wanting to “borrow” the main attraction, i.e. a large, wooden pirate ship (he says he’ll return it on the way home!).





Snoozing on the flight ;) 
    
                                                                                                                          
On the way to our THIRD plane, the kids grab one another’s hands and begin singing a Polish children’s song Siała Baba Mak, at the tops of their voices. Where do they get the energy? Hardly any sleeping on the plane but thankful for private TV screens where Wizard of Oz and Toy Story are watched.

The amazing Business Lounge playroom!

 In Australia!

Kingsford Smith airport in Sydney is probably among the most beautifully situated airports in the world! After flying for hours over Australia’s dry interior, the plane reaches the coastline and turns over the ocean at an angle where the early morning sunrays blind us and we can see the waves crashing against the sand and, in the distance, the shiny tall buildings of Sydney’s CBD. The landing strip is surrounded by water.

 Gorgeous Sydney bird's eye view

After departing Poland on Thursday at 3:25 pm local time, we land in Sydney on Friday 9:25 pm Polish time – 30 hours later. In Australia it is already Saturday, 7:25 am. A Santa with a large bell circulates the airport. The customs official, in weak Polish, asks if we didn’t bring any Polish sausages? Generally there is a ban on bringing any foreign food into Australia as the country is completely isolated from the world, but the official assures me that he would have allowed the mushroom conserves in that I refused to take for fear of them being confiscated. I admit to carrying straw Christmas decorations in our luggage (also a controversial item). To that he replies: “But without them, Christmas just wouldn’t be the same!” A friendly welcome in the country.

In the heat of the sun, at an open café at Sydney airport, we order something to drink and change into lighter clothing. I take off my boots with relief and change into thongs J I can smell the salty seaside air.

My parents drive up in their car and we hire one for the return trip. Olgierd really wants to visit a beach so we drive to nearby Botany Bay, where the settlers had first arrived over 200 years earlier. The beach is charming – pale sand and clear water, which the children run into immediately in their clothes. I pull out a suitcase from the boot of the car to get their swimsuits and slather them in sunscreen against the dangerous Aussie sun. It is generally advised to stay out of the sun between 10 am and 4 pm, and this is 10 and the sunrays are strong. When I wet my feet I want to jump in myself but I don’t even have a towel. We can see other planes landing at Sydney airport from here, just like ours had a few hours earlier! After a brief swim, walk and snack we jump into the car for the three-hour drive to Canberra. It was a great idea to break the exhausting trip with this beach visit because the little ones end up sleeping almost the whole way in their comfy booster seats.

 Enjoying Botany Bay beach after 30 hrs travel time!




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