1. Glasgow-Amsterdam (KLM): For my dawn departure to the other side of the world I appeared to be the only backpacker amongst a lot of bleary-eyed business people, and we departed at 6am in the complete darkness that is a January morning in Scotland. It’d been a good few years since I’d been on a plane, but it felt like there was a fair old kick of acceleration on the take-off roll. Maybe it was just more noticeable with a smaller, older plane (a Fokker I think). The flight itself was fairly peaceful and uneventful, with only a croissant and a glass of orange juice stopping me from dozing the whole way across the North Sea. At first sight, the Netherlands looked pretty dreary from above: bare brown fields criss-crossed with grey motorways filled with sleepy motorists on their way to wherever they had to be by nine on a Thursday morning. After landing, we were directed to a distant corner of the airport where maybe two dozen smaller KLM planes were parked in neat rows in the winter sun. The air was freezing cold as we disembarked, and the grimy airport buses ferrying us to the terminal were even colder on the inside, if that were possible. The bus ride took maybe ten minutes, and I realised that Amsterdam Schipol must be bloody huge. A smiling woman in a KLM uniform offered me a complimentary copy of today’s Financial Times at the terminal entrance, which I politely declined.
After passing through the border, I reached the stage of the journey that had worried me the most about my first travel adventure: finding my connecting flight. But everything was clearly and logically signed, and within ten minutes I’d identified my departure gate, just as my friend Steve had reassured me that it would be in the pub the other night. But I still had two hours to kill, and it occurred to me that I probably should have brought some spending money with me to buy a bite to eat, maybe even a beer. Then I remembered I had some money stashed in an early birthday card my mother had given me at GLA. I managed to find a currency exchange, swapped thirty pounds for some euros, and started exploring the bewildering array of shops, bars and restaurants. Ironically enough the first thing I bought was a cd, after finding a copy of John Williams’ soundtrack for Attack of the Clones in the bargain bin of an electrical store. Equally ironically, I then found myself in Burger King buying a bacon double cheeseburger meal; at least I knew what I was getting. I finished my spending spree in a small bar near my gate with a glass of Heineken. There were a couple of other people sitting at the small bar, one an American woman en route from Dallas to the Middle East, the other a Japanese man who spoke little and smiled less. Within ten minutes they were both on their way to their different destinations, leaving me alone at the bar. I mentioned to the barman how cool it must be to spend all day working here, meeting countless people from all over the world and hearing their stories of where they’d been and where they were headed. But any wonder he might once have felt at his position looked like it had left him long ago.
2. Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur (Malaysian Airlines): compared to the noisy little Fokker that had ferried me to Amsterdam that morning, the Boeing 777 I took for the next leg was a royal palace. As I settled into my seat during boarding I marvelled at the little television screen in the back of the seat in front of me, and the brand new pillow and blanket that had been provided for me. It looked like not one of the cabin crew was over twenty-five and they positively glided around the cabin in long jade dresses, dispensing hot towels to everyone prior to take-off with an almost inhumanly warm and professional smile. My two seat-mates were a South African couple who were on their way to visit their son who had settled in Sydney. They were delighted to hear that this was my first time on a trip like this, and cheerfully told me not to worry about climbing over them in the middle of the night if I needed to go to the toilet or just stretch my legs. Compared to this morning, the acceleration on take-off was barely noticeable, and the cabin crew were soon doing the rounds again, handing out little packets of pretzels along with cups of water or orange juice. Now I had time to explore my in-flight entertainment, which offered eight channels of movies and TV shows on a four-hour loop, six different radio channels and even some Nintendo games, all controlled with the little handset that was stowed underneath the small TV screen. This was a world away from my last long-haul flight, on a Northwest Orient from Prestwick to Boston in 1979; we were given some boiled sweets before take-off, and then watched a Steve McQueen movie projected onto a screen at the front of the cabin, which I could barely see through the fog of cigarette smoke.
Also included in the in-flight entertainment was a flight tracker, which gave continuous updates on our position both locally and globally. As we climbed slowly through Europe’s wintry skies, it wasn’t long before our route took us over Berlin; the city was clearly visible from above, covered in a blanket of white, with the Brandenburg Gate and TV tower standing out. It was funny to think of leaving winter behind, knowing that in less than a day I would be in sweltering temperatures in the middle of an Australian summer. An hour or so later, I realised that I was passing over Slovakia, though by now we were too high above the clouds to see anything. But I gave Simona a little mental wave as we passed overhead, and resolved to email her about it later. By now the skies outside were darkening, and it was time for dinner service to start. Given the option of chicken or fish, I opted for the chicken, and was amazed at the small miracle of culinary ergonomics that was handed to me on my tray; a tasty entree of chicken and rice, a small salad, cheese and crackers, some chocolate and a little pouch containing cutlery and condiments. Drinks followed dinner, and, after several complimentary beers, I was ready to try to get some rest. But despite the dimmed lights, comfortable seat and cosy blanket, I found it impossible to doze off for any more than maybe ten or fifteen minutes at a time. So instead I found myself drawn to the view outside the window; we were flying over India by this time, something which I found oddly exciting, as if the distance of how far I was going was finally starting to sink in. In fact, the country was a lot bigger than I realised, and it took nearly four hours to cross. But I marvelled at the fact that the distant clusters of orange light below us were the cities of another continent, and yet they looked pretty much the same as the west of Scotland had looked this morning on take-off. I eventually gave up on my futile search for sleep, and concentrated instead on honing my Tetris skills on my seat-back entertainment system, whilst keeping an eye on the distant lightning storm that was breaking on the horizon.
Whilst tracking our progress, one thing that had puzzled me on the flight show was the recurring graphic featuring a plane, an arrow, a distance in kilometres and the word ‘Macca’. Surely this wasn’t keeping us informed of how far we were from Frank McAvennie? The penny dropped when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur; being a Muslim country, ‘Macca’ represented Mecca, and the correct direction in which to pray, not the activities of a former Celtic striker, (which would undoubtedly have been of a lot more interest).
3. Kuala Lumpur-Perth (Malaysian Airlines): Three things struck me on my arrival in Malaysia. One was the clammy heat, even though it was only six in the morning. The second was the gleaming, futuristic, glass and metal terminal building. The third was the stony-faced female soldiers in their hijabs, carrying sub-machine guns. I had a few hours to kill before the final leg of my journey, and wouldn’t mind getting a souvenir or two and maybe a beer. But amazingly enough, I couldn’t find a currency exchange anywhere in the terminal, and had to content myself with window shopping for two hours. I gazed longingly in the door of an almost-empty bar called Cheers, then found myself slightly unnerved watching the early morning routine at the Burger King. Much of it was oddly familiar; the girls messing about and gossiping on the counter whilst stocking the drinks fridge, the duty manager doing her QSC and telling the girls to stop messing about, and some poor guy who had clearly been dispatched to the dining area for some detail cleaning whilst it was still quiet. But what on earth was a Double Black Pepper burger? I would have to find out some other time.
The eleven-and-a-half hour flight to Kuala Lumpur had been a fair stretch of both mind and body, so it felt like the upcoming five-hour trip down to Perth would be a breeze. Plus I now had the incentive of knowing that I would finally, after all these years, be in Australia this afternoon. The plane looked almost the same as the one that I had arrived on; same in-seat entertainment, same smiling stewardesses, same tasty lunch squeezed into a tiny tray. The only difference in fact was that my Nintendo didn’t seem to be working, but by now I was far too excited about finally completing the last leg of my epic journey and arriving in Australia. But there was a slightly more sombre part of the trip to complete first. As we left Malaysia behind, I realised that we were now flying over the region where the Indian Ocean tsunami had struck just a few weeks ago. I don’t know what I expected to see, peering down over the coastlines of South East Asia. But it was sobering to think of all the devastation that I knew would still be lying beneath us, and the tens of thousands of poor souls who were probably still buried beneath it.
The black mood didn’t last though, because after a few short hours, there it was: not quite in the flesh yet, but Australia had finally appeared on the edge of the little satellite map tracking our progress. Any thoughts of Nintendo or free beers were forgotten now, as I watched the tiny dot of our plane inch across the screen towards it, eyes strained to the horizon out of the window, desperately trying to catch the first glimpse of my destination. Until finally, there was just the tiniest sliver of brown in the distance, between the blue sky and even bluer ocean, slowly resolving itself into the continent I had come so far to see. Our route would see us arrive over the northwest of Australia, and hug the coastline as we turned and headed south to Perth, still two hours away. But as luck would have it, I was sitting on the right side to enjoy a long, lingering view of my home for the next three months, My first impression was of shock: although I knew what to expect from the West Australian landscape, it was even more barren and unforgiving-looking than I could possibly have imagined. Huge swathes of barren brown earth and rock, broken up by the occasional blotchy patches of salt lakes; an incredibly blue sea beating against long white beaches in seemingly untouched bays; a long, empty highway hugging the shore for endless stretches, a tiny grey thread that was too afraid to go any further inland. Little wonder that the Dutch had landed here centuries ago, made a half-hearted claim to the place, and then promptly wrote off the continent and its ignorant natives as worthless. But as we neared Perth, the landscape began to change, morphing into a vast urban sprawl, baking in the heat.
Having finally landed after my epic journey across the globe, I collected my bags and made for the border. I had heard all the stories about people getting huge fines for bringing random things like fruit into Australia, so when I filled out the landing card, I answered yes to some of the questions that I wasn’t sure about; better to look like a numpty than to say no, and get done by customs. As it turned out, they weren’t too worried about my bottles of Buckfast and Irn-Bru, although the sniffer dog in the line at passport control was a bit too friendly for my liking. I did get pulled up shortly afterwards on my way to baggage reclaim though, by a genial border officer who wanted to know how long I was going to be in the country for, how much money I had, where I was staying etc. And then out into arrivals, and the stifling heat, with a smiling Katie sitting patiently flicking through a magazine, looking for all the world like she’d been waiting for me to come off a Citylink at St Andrew’s Square…
4. Perth-Kuala Lumpur (Malaysain Airlines): three months after collecting me at the airport, Katie drove me back out there after a final pint at, (appropriately enough), The Flying Scotsman. At check-in, the woman pointed out that I could check two pieces of baggage if I liked, so I handed over my smaller backpack that I had been planning to take on-board with me, the one that has all the goodies like CD’s, sweets, my footy, etc. There were some mixed emotions on takeoff; I couldn’t stop thinking about all my adventures over the past three months, but at the same time I was looking forward to getting home too and sharing them with everyone. When we arrived at Kuala Lumpur, I managed to find the currency exchange that had eluded me the last time, but now I had no money left. Plus my ears hadn’t ‘un-popped’ yet. So I sat patiently for two hours til my next flight, deaf, skint and suddenly very tired…
5. Kuala Lumpur-Amsterdam (KLM): I’d gotten used to the comforts and amenities of flying with Malaysian Airlines by now. But the route I was flying on was a code-share, and for the sector back to Amsterdam we were on a KLM aircraft. No fancy in-seat entertainment system, just a big screen at the end of the cabin. Tasteless dinner served in a limp paper carton (I had two bites and left the rest). It was a long, long way back to Amsterdam that night, no matter how many complimentary beers I tried to drown it with.
6. Amsterdam-Glasgow (KLM): Having travelled to the ends of the earth and back, I was understandably disappointed to arrive back home and find that only one of my bags had made it back with me; the one filled with dirty laundry and a dog-eared lonely planet guide for Australia, and not the one full of goodies which I had been talked into checking in at Perth…
Gill 9A 