So after our few months back at home, enjoying an amazing British summer, and a great Christmas, the time had come to fly back out to Australia again. Now, I’ll be honest, we booked the flights back in early December, but I don’t think either of us were really ready to leave and come back out yet. The main factors were that we’d only taken temporary jobs (as planned), so were left with no work for the moment, and were facing the depression of cold, post Christmas-birthday-wedding England. So, we booked our flights for 21st Jan, to give us time after our trip to Scotland to gather our things and our thoughts.

It’d been a good 7 months since our last long haul flight, and even then we flew home from Singapore, so our 2 flights only lasted 7 hours each. This time, we had a beast of a flight ahead of us, at around 11.5 hours from Doha to Perth. Happily for us, and especially for David who got to avoid my airport anxiety for a bit longer, Becky (my sister) and her husband Kenny had bought access to a lounge in the airport as a birthday present, which includes fast track security. Now, we’d been through the same security (normal, non-fast-tracked, average peasant security) a few weeks prior on our way to Glasgow, and I’d forgotten what a hell hole English airports are. So, I was extremely excited to bypass the busy queues, straight to our comfortable chairs with food and tea and coffee in the lounge (seriously, it was amazing. And as we strode through Gatwick, I saw zero spare seats, so it was a dream to have so much comfortable space to sit in!)

Anyway, it went slightly downhill from that point, but we did sign up for a 24 hour journey from London to Perth, so it was as cramped and long as expected! We landed in Perth in the evening, and made our way by Uber to Fremantle, about half an hour by car from the airport, where we discovered that we were extremely dehydrated! We then had to spend some time battling with the vending machine, as it had eaten our dollars but our water was dangling over the edge! David was told to shake the machine to get the blessed water to drop and so, there we were. Tired, very thirsty and confused, shaking a vending machine as if our lives depended on it!

As if by pathetic fallacy for our jet lagged brains and bodies, the next two days or so were spent in fairly miserable weather (for Perth. So, maybe still 25c just with some rain). During these few days, I saw 4am a few times, and thus completed one of my books due to having to wait until a more godly hour to get out of bed. Upon a 6.30am (the hour I chose as more reasonable to arise) traipse of the hostel, I discovered a long after coffee machine and, indeed, a free breakfast! Due to not having eaten in a while, and not having eaten anything but plane food in days, I promptly helped myself to many many slices of toast, and at least 2 cups of coffee and a cup of tea!

Luckily for both myself and the other guests wanting the breakfast, our body clocks soon improved, as did the weather!

Accomodation: Fremantle Prison YHA