The Difficulty Deciding What to Take ...

No matter how you do it, deciding what to take and what to leave behind when you travel is a difficult task.

I like to lay out in front of me, usually on our bed, all those things I think I need to take. Then I rationalise between what I want to take and what I really need, bearing in mind that I will buy something while away ... a few souvenirs and presents for family and friends. A new shirt or pair of boots.

When you are going to both hot and cold climates, it's even a greater challenge. Because we are spending the first half of our holiday in the Middle East where it will be warmish, we have decided not to take too many heavy winter clothes. We'll buy what we need during the second half of our journey in the Italian and Austrian Alps, the UK and Scotland where it will be colder. If we are really lucky and those countries are having heatwaves (oh, yeah?) then we won't have to buy anything.

Buying new clothes means you are able to discard some of the worn-out stuff you've been carrying about but are too attached to to ditch. Well, I get attached to my clothes and stuff, don't you?

It's very hard to turf out something that has kept you warm winter after winter ... an old faithful ... and to recruit something untried and untested.

So, the packing continues. As we leave tomorrow, decisions need to be made, rationalising needs to be done. We need to fit our stuff into our new Delsey suit cases and by some miracle be less than the allocated weight.

Tomorrow it's Alice Springs to Adelaide to Melbourne and then to Abu Dhabi. It will be a little like going home.

Robin

Travels in Wonderlands

My dear wife Christina has been busy for the last couple of weeks booking hotels, air flights, and otherwise arranging our trip overseas for September to December. We will be visiting the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey, France, Austria, Germany, the UK and Scotland and calling in to see some of our friends enroute.

As soon as we have everything finalised, I'll prepare an itinerary and post it online somewhere for friends to download. That way, if you are going to be home or near where we are, we may be able to get together.

There's a fair bit of arranging to do, but Chris is doing a top job as she does with everything she touches. She's one of those lucky people who seems to be able to do everything, also she does tell me occasionally that she can't make pavlova ... tough. Get over it I say.

This will probably be the last great trip we do and we will have a lovely house available for close friends who would like to spend three months at Alice Springs. All you'd have to do is make sure the watering system keeps going and the plants don't die. However, three months is a long time to spend at Alice Springs, you can see everything here in about two or three weeks. But, it would be a perfect opportunity to sit around and write your memoirs, recover from a broken heart, or something else that doesn't involve too much touring. Think about it.

Watch this space for the itinerary.

Robin

Wonderful Homecoming, but Cold!

After an interesting three weeks at Durban, Stellenbosch and Cape Town in South Africa, it was good to feel the wheels hit the Alice Springs Airport runway at 4 pm last Saturday.

As we approached from the west, it occurred to me that Australia is so large, with most of the land being inhospitable and not much good for anything but flying over. Thousands of kilometres of nothing.

At one stage I imagined how we could move Israel to some part of outback Western Australia and let the Israelis live peacefully in our centre. Unfortunately, the religious artifacts that are part of their problem with Palestine and their extensive history couldn't be moved, so it's not likely to happen real soon. And maybe they wouldn't want to come here.

I also solved the problem South African whites have in not wanting to live in a country where the infrastructure and systems are declining and crime is increasing rapidly; they could leave the country to the blacks by moving all whites to Australia (anyone with criminal records, no useful job prospects etc excluded, we have enough fools of our own). There's not very many of them and we'd pick up some excellent talent and some really good people whose culture is similar to ours.

As a trade-off, we would give each of our 300,000 Aborigines a million dollars and send them to South Africa where they could be surrounded by their close relatives and live a life of luxury free of the scourge of the white man (The AUD buys 7.? SA Rand, so we could even reduce the million substantially).

That way, the problems of Aboriginal society and the huge, ongoing burden to Australian taxpayers would be eliminated. Australia could truly "Advance Australia Fair".

Of course, all dreams come to an end and when I came back to reality, I realised how ridiculous these ideas were. Probably no less ridiculous than the Australian Government's recent claim that it needs to set up yet another government department to administer indigenous affairs. Ho hum, I can recall at least four in the last 20 years that were said to have failed miserably, two of which I spent 15 years of my working life with.

Alice Springs Airport from the air is unimpressive with flat, sandy country with stunted (arid land) vegetation. Despite that, it's a nice township with generally friendly, good natured people and it's a nice place to live and bring up kids.

Our kids, now 33 and 30 respectively and our grandson Tory met us at the airport and we travelled home for the first time in two years finding our house, four wheel drive and other stuff much the same as we had left it.

We have much to do to resettle, but we've made the first step and all we have to do now is cope with another couple of months of freezing weather (after the 50 degrees of Al Ain) and we'll be fine. Actually it's only freezing at morning and evening ... the days are sunny and warm.

Robin