Time Travel

A few weeks ago I went to visit the family in Adelaide, a mere 4,000km away, across half of Western Australia and the great sweeping plains of the Nullabor Desert. When we heard we were being transferred to Karratha, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to see a great deal more of my Australian family, most of whom I hadn’t seen for ten years. I hadn’t bargained on the fact that Adelaide was quite so far from Karratha, or that flights would be quite so expensive. I have said it many a time in this blog before and I will say it again – Australia is a bloody big place! What further adds to the travel is the time difference – Adelaide are currently 2.5 hours ahead of Western Australia. It is a very odd thing to think that I am more likely to suffer from jet lag from flying to another part of Australia than I am from flying all the way to Hong Kong, which is in the same time zone as WA. I left the house in Karratha at 8.45am and arrived in Adelaide at 6.10pm. It took me an entire day of travelling to reach the neighbouring state. It is distances like that that a girl from the tiny island nation of Britain and the even tinier city of Hong Kong finds it hard to fathom.


I arrived at the airport feeling slightly weary, to be greeted with much chatter and hugs and questions from seven members of the family. And this was possibly the quietest part of my week-long stay. From then on I was bombarded by an onslaught of family from the moment I got up until the moment I collapsed into bed. It was lovely really but living up in remote Karratha, far away from any family whatsoever, it was rather a shock to the system. I just wasn’t used to the running around, the screaming, the constant need for attention – and that was from the adults! The Father’s side of the family is big and loud and dramatic and opinionated and it is always a circus when we visit but, to be fair, I am also loud and dramatic and opinionated so I can’t really comment. I had a wonderful time, chatting away to cousins who when I last saw them were not even teenagers and now talk about jobs and girlfriends and travelling. As the eldest of 15 grandchildren, I am sort of stuck in between the world of the aunties, uncles and grandparents, and that of the younger cousins, so I took it in turns to dip into talking about boys and school and university, and conversing about mortgages and insurance and children and careers. Sadly, I think I probably fit more easily into the latter category – I certainly seemed to be able to contribute to those conversations more easily than the teenage ones. I tried to relate to them but I fear that I may have come off as an adult desperately still trying to be cool and cling to her youth. I had no idea what some of the words they frequently used meant, although that could just be an Australian thing - that's what I'm going with, anyway. Oh dear, I am definitely getting old, which is something that my 5 year-old cousin obviously thought too - he guessed that I was 45. On that note, I am really not sure when next I will visit Adelaide and the teeming masses but perhaps I shouldn’t leave it so long next time or I will be assumed to be close to retirement age.