6th June 2024

We left London for Sydney on 6th June with the UK building up to election fever and Kier Starmer on the threshold of a resounding victory and Rishi Sunak in trouble for leaving a D day event early to continue on the campaign trail!

All things considered, this is an election which I am not unhappy to be observing from some 10,500 miles away. Who wins the keys to Downing Street is not as interesting as who is going to sort out the mess that is Gaza for example. Jim’s vote has been sorted but mine has been unavoidably lost in the post!

As I write this blog, Jim and I are sitting in a fab cafe selling fresh homemade Indian food in the Food Court at Delhi airport. This completes the first leg of our flight to Sydney. Only 12 more hours to go!

We are recovering from a close encounter with Indian airport security that had ushered us away from the scanning machines into a corner with a stack of well thumbed instructions about banned items. They had zeroed in on my Garmin Explorer which was flashing ominously and looked close enough to a Satellite phone to create a bit of a buzz about potential banned items such as fire arms and detonators.

We told them that it was a satellite SOS messaging system and not a phone, expressly designed to help us out in the Australian desert, in the event of vehicle breakdown. They were suspicious, as they were not at all sure that Australia had a desert and they certainly were not going to learn about it from us!

Eventually someone with 2 stars on their shoulder advised the 3 star superior that it may be ok to transport something in transit as long as it was not coming into India! The Garmin came out of a drawer and was handed back. It was definitely a close shave, sat phone or not!

We are now being called up for boarding and most passengers have been called as they belong to one of umpteen superior clubs and fast tracks. Eventually it will be just Jim and myself waiting in the lounge to board. We are hoping our cases have moved from underneath the Indira Gandhi airport KFC and are now tucked up in the hold.

8th June 2024

We landed in Sydney and were met by my brother who took us to his new home in Bayview in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. We had no plans to go into the Centre of town this time and headed out over the Harbour Bridge towards Bayview, located in the Northern Beaches area. On the way we collected the van which is now parked in my brother’s driveway, which is in a small rainforest! This camper, a Renault Master, has been lent to us by an Australian couple who are currently embarking on a simultaneous tour of the UK in our Mercedes Sprinter. So we are experiencing our very first van swap! So far so good.