"We're Baa-ack!" Of course it makes more sense if you use a scary horror movie voice. Which we did. And back in a way we didn't actually expect for quite a few more years. That is, we're here in Sydney actually living in our own apartment - for the first time ever. Normally that's our tenant's job while we gallivant around the world in our full time roles as International Housesitters of Mystery. What can we say. This year has been completely 2020'ed. Whilst we say our prayers every night for a super-duper 100% effective vaccine with no side effects and a free backrub thrown in, the first few months of 2021 could be a bit 2020'ed as well. It's our new expletive when it all gets too much - as in "Off you '2020', we simply cannot be 2020'ed dealing with you". Obviously one must pick one's audience. It's going to be an adventure that's for sure.

We left the hotel in Broadbeach at 11 am for the relatively long Uber jaunt to the airport - well over an hour. Turns out that Broadbeach is a horrendously long way from Brisbane airport, Back in 2017 when we were housesitting in the Paradise Point area of the Gold Coast, we did the airport run multiple times, dropping off and picking up owners. Didn't seem that far. Mind you, Paradise Point is 30 minutes north of Broadbeach - so the length of the trip suddenly became much, much longer.

As wonderful as it is to be in Australia right now (and we do know how lucky we are), as soon as we arrived at Brisbane Airport we were reminded of a cartoon we saw years ago. The line 'In Australia, we pay too much for (insert anything/everything here)'. Inconceivable that the use of an airport trolley is $4 - we used it for exactly 5 minutes. What is even more inconceivable is a) they can get away with charging it and b) that people put up with paying it. Including us. Grrrrrr. Can't actually think of any other country we've visited, nearly 100, where a basic airport service, akin to a footpath or a toilet, is charged for. Having giving that hobby horse a good gallop, we headed to the Domestic Premium check-in area - turns out it had been closed since March - luckily we had our trolley(!) and wheeled everything to the other end of the Domestic Terminal to reach the Business Class check-in counter. We were at the airport well and truly earlier than need be because we've been in withdrawal for the whole travelling experience and this would be our first post/peri-Covid lounge and flight experience (can't really count the endeavour from Sarajevo to Qatar to Adelaide to Brisbane back in March... when we got back it Australia was a la-la land of twilight zone proportions - where everyone thought we'd overreacted a bit, racing back from Europe because of a 'flu and they really thought it would be OK to let the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix go ahead. The old days of innocence indeed).

Once we offloaded around 100 kg of luggage and returned the rort-trolley to it's stand, we felt like the weight of the world was off our shoulders. We passed through security and headed to the Qantas Business Lounge quick smart. We both agreed it was the first time in 7 months that we felt 'normal'. In fact, the whole experience was about as normal as anything can be these days - there was no buffet and the toasted sandwich station was closed - but the food offerings, served to order, were perfect - leek & potato soup, spicy pork & sour cream jacket potato. The self-service bar was closed but the full-service bar was wide open and ably run by the busiest person at Brisbane airport. She kept us in bubbles, coffees and pink grapefruit juice for well over 3 hours (and dishes of roasted nuts - yum!) The time in the lounge flew by and we amused ourselves with eats, drinks, reading and so forth - just so nice to be there.

The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was quite the experience - thanks be to Qantas Points, we shelled out for Business class - for no other reason that it allowed us 4 x 32 kg bags (or 128 kg) vs. 2 x 23 kg in the back of the bus. And we bought some great mohair blankets, Tefal pans, and too many clothes during our 7 months in Queensland - we utilised as much of that luggage allowance as our 4 huge bags could bear. So really the bags went Business Class and we just tagged along for the ride. We headed to the gate as soon as boarding was announced and trundled on board immediately - there were more people around the gate area than we'd been exposed to in 7 months and the flight was packed. This was interesting in itself because until the Queensland borders open, it's a one way trip (unless people pay $4000 odd for quarantine upon return to Queensland). If anything, aside from wearing masks to board and while we were reading, the flight was normal. Can't believe 'normal' is now someting to aspire to (vs. splendid, outstanding, magnificent or superb). We had a nice meal, a few more drinks, a natter with the flight attendant and then arrived in Sydney a short while later. And then, we entered the Twilight Zone again. Ours was the only flight landing... and so the only baggage belt operating... the airport was a veritable ghost town. We skipped the trolley rort at this point becuse the carousel was only 20 metres to the taxi rank. Turns out our driver had been waiting all day and had two fares. The lack of tourists and business travellers, domestic and international, has decimated the earnings of taxi drivers... very rarely would we feel sorry for Sydney cabbies in the olden days that's for sure.

In fairness, having been eating and drinking for hours and up early to finalise the apartment, the day was dragging on a bit by 6 pm. Yep. 10 minutes from touchdown to taxi rank and 4 pieces of checked luggage collected. Some sort of land speed record for Sydney Airport. The drive to Potts Point was uneventful - seems Sydney can still do peak hour traffic with the best of them. We stopped to pick up our apartment keys from the estate agent, jumped back in the taxi and proceeded to our apartment (still seems strange to say that). We offloaded the suitcases and admired the only stick of furniture in the place - a gorgeous leather recliner sofa we scored off Gumtree. It looked even better in real life and we were ecstatic that the removalist who lives in the building next door had managed to pick it up, take it apart, get it in and successfully put it back together, all before we arrived on Thursday evening. We left the big (huge, massive) bags, grabbed our cabin bags and walked 5 minutes to reach our bargain hotel for the night, just along the street. Think $100 for the night with a free upgrade to a harbour view room... normally / once upon a time, $280 or more. Once we checked in in (santise, ID, sanitise, credit card, sanitise, fill out the Covid Register, get the keys, sanitise the keys, get the lift, sanitise) and got to our room, reality started to hit when we saw the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and Sydney's skyline laid out in front of us - like jewels in a black velvet case. We waxed lyrical about the view then proceeded to wander around our 'hood for the first time since May 2017 (our last visit to Sydney - coincidentally stayed in the same hotel then for 5 weeks - though via AirBnB that time and definitely no harbour view room!)

Our evening of wanderings reminded us why we love art deco Potts Point so much. We were also surprised to see one of Sydney's previous virus hotspots, The Apollo Restaurant, was back up and running and chock-full of diners on a Thursday night - in fact, the whole area seemed to be doing very well for itself - albeit with more masks on the streets than we'd seen in our whole time in Queensland.

We eventually slept, though not well - the Queen size bed seemed inordinately poky after 7 months in a squishy and comfy split king in our Queensland apartment - but one night didn't kill us. We were up bright and early on the Friday morning and out the door by 10 am to head to our real home and a shed load more reality. We purchased an ex-hotel split king bed, also off Gumtree, and that was due for delivery by 11 am - also when we would find out if it would fit in the bedroom. And it did. We take our wins where we can - and it was clean and pillow topped and super comfy - they even brought the black velvety valances to cover the bases - huge, huge bargain altogether and undoubtedly the most comfortable bed we've ever owned. By midday on Day 1 we were officially up to 2 sticks of furniture.

The fun truly began in the mid afternoon when the '2 men and a truck' arrived from the company who has had our storage pod for the 5 years since we sold our house in Woolloomooloo. They originally had 2 pods... but we did some serious culling during our last visit to Sydney in 2017 and got it down to 1 pod. We even had the storage paid up until early 2022. The original plan was to use a share van via Go-Get, visit the pod, gather up some chairs, linens, things we planned to sell... and then drive it all back to the apartment and sort it out. They do say no plan survives first contact with the enemy. We decided in a moment of rash clarity that all that sounded like a lot of hard work and instead, we should get the whole damn kit and caboodle delivered, unpacked and then work on it in our own sweet time. Not to mention receive a substantial credit from the prepaid storage. Seemed like a good idea at the time (and now, at the time of writing, an excellent idea - as we've made the sort of progress we didint' expect to see until Christmas). But on 2 October, it seemed like the stupidest idea we've ever had. Olympically stupid. 24 kt stupid. The men who unloaded the truck were bamboozled at the sheer volume of crap we had managed to shovel into the pod. It took them right on the allocated 1 hour of included labour - and they got to our delivery after a day of very hard work. By the time they left the only spare floor space was either lying on the bed or sitting on the couch. The scent of mildew hung heavily in the air and some of the suitcases and sports bags containing linen were stained. Nothing, not one thing, boded well. It took 4 days of hard labour just to find the storage container with the booze stashed in it - Hello Bacardi! Hello Port and hellloooooo Moonshine we bought Utah all those years ago. Other storage boxes just did not spark the same level of joy, that is for sure. We did however crack on. And on and on and on. We even thought of cancelling the housesit we had due to start on 17 October - how could we leave the nightmare to it's own devices for a whole week. Fortunately, shopping came to our rescue. We loaded a few items up on gumtree and sold a few too. We ordered the basics from Kmart - Kettle, toaster, iron, ironing board, laundry basket and loo brush. Most importantly we went onto Catch and ordered a 4 step step ladder so we could access the tops of the wardrobes... 3 metre ceilings provide a great feeling of space - but aren't entirely practical without a ladder. The joy of this shopping was spending the best part of 2 full days indoors and waiting for deliveries - and working, working, working. Even had a couple of Gumtree pickups during the proceedings - and the progress - oh the progress we did make! So much so that we even found some art that was destined for the dustbin and found, miraculously, that it actually wasn't that bad and the humidity had done it some good.

There were three seascapes on card and a canvas (the face of a girl), that we impulse bought in Essaouira, Morocco back in late 2012. The proprietor said he could deliver 'as is' - stretched on a frame. It was supposed to be shipped on its stretching frame but that plan flew out the window the minute we walked out of the shop... and it was freighted to Sydney rolled up and squashed. He even had the cheek to email us, tell us it couldn't be posted as he'd promised and in fact, it had to be rolled and he wanted more money... well we can tell you that that didn't happen. We were devastated when we got back to Sydney in 2013 and found it rolled up, squashed, creased, wrecked and a hard solid roll of flaking paint. We chucked it in the store room and when we sold the house, it got put in the storage pods, never to be seen again - we had written it off. It dried out, sat in storage and when we looked at it 3 years ago during the initial consolidation of storage from 2 pods to 1, it made cracking noises when we unrolled it a tiny bit... We figured then it was definitely stuffed. We unpacked the storage pod a couple of weeks ago and left the painting sitting in a corner of the apartment... the texture of the canvas was much softer today, pliant and it unrolled no problem at all (very surprised! - maybe the humidity). Wow - 'The Girl' rides again. Now it's going to cost $170 odd to get it stretched onto a frame so it can go on a wall, or sit in a corner... not sure if that will happen - but good to know it can.

A 1000 years ago, in early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, an epidemiologist/vacinologist/'ist' of some sort said, sagely, that the virus was so new that learning how to treat it and beat it was a like flying a plane while you were still building it. That's what unpacking whilst living in our apartment felt like. Just to figure out what was salvageable took something like 20 loads of washing and drying. In fact we didn't leave the communal laundry for close to 5 hours (and that wash 4 washers and 4 dryers going full bore). Then we had to find spots to put all the clean stuff. Aside from the ongoing 'apartment' situation, we have enjoyed being back in the 'hood immensely. We've walked down to Beare Park in Elizabeth Bay, watched the boats at sunset, cruised the Saturday organic market and are well on the way to getting through Phase 1 of 'sorted'.

We obviously can't work 24/7 and thankfully quite a few of our old haunts are still in business - so as we get ourselves sorted and embark on a marathon of Gumtree/Ebay selling - we'll make sure we still have some fun. Repeat after us in a hypnosis induced voice... "It's an adventure, yeeeeessss, It's an adventure, yeeeeeessss...." Vive la Vaccine!