THE AUSTRALIAN
"So what do you call yourselves...New South Welsh?"
"Errr.....No.....Not exactly", the nice man was starting to get irritating, as nice men sometimes do on ten-hour flights. She turned in the direction of the stewardess and requested another napkin for her daughter, who was struggling through the complimentary meal of cardboard chicken and chips. They had already stopped at Dubai and the captain had announced that there was not long to go now - only two hours - but the last minutes felt like time eeking out. Outside the window, there was nothing to see except cloud and sky. She did not know where they were exactly - just very vaguely somewhere over southern England. Manchester could not be far away.
This was their first journey out of Australia. They had travelled to the other side of the world and into a world that was darker, colder.
When they arrived, the first thing she looked for was the sea. Until England, all she had seen was clear, blue ocean. Her father told her that in England she would encounter windswept cliffs that would chill her to the bone and leave her hands numb, and wide cheery seaside promenades drawn like a stage across a brown and green drink. She did not believe him until she saw it with her own eyes.
The North Sea seemed to stretch from cliff-to-cliff as far as shadow ships that snuck across the horizon through mists and fogs. The waters were murky - the ocean she remembered back home was bluer, clearer and seemed to flow outward as far as the eye could see from flatlands near shore.
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