d-Wizz Hankuk Travel Diary [2005]

Day 36 (2005-08-31) / Day 37 (2005-09-01) / Epilogue
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Day 37: 2005-09-01 (Thursday)

I slept sporadically on the overnight flight from Singapore. As the flight met the sunrise, I began to look for familiar landmarks, but as we were coming in from the west, I did not recognise much, until I saw Cunningham’s Gap, about 120km from Brisbane. We flew over the city of Ipswich and then I realised we were going fly right over my parents’ house at Acacia Ridge. I quickly prepared my camera, but just as Acacia Ridge came into view, the plane turned sharply to the north and all I could see was blue sky. By the time we had levelled out again, we were over Mt. Gravatt, with Acacia Ridge (and my parents’ house) about 10km behind us. I did get to see it with my eyes, but the camera shot I took did not work out well at all.

I had much better photographic success a few minutes later as we descended into Brisbane airport, with a great shot of the Gateway Bridge.

I landed back on Australian soil at 0612hrs: 36 days, 15 hours and 5 minutes after leaving. I collected my luggage and proceeded towards immigration, customs and quarantine. This proved to be the most thorough screening of any of the five previous international transfers. The question about bringing food back from overseas had caused me to answer ‘yes’ on the quarantine form, and so my luggage was checked thoroughly. Even my snare drum was brought into question, because of its wooden shell. They confisticated and destroyed some Korean candy made from sesame, apparently because it did not bear any labelling to identify it. They cautioned me about it and let me go, but not before totally unpacking just about everything. It took me about ten minutes to put it all back together.

I went out into the terminal and headed for the train, which took me back to Bowen Hills (the station closest to my house). I again had to take my luggage in two stages to my home, and then I discovered that the front door was locked (this is not usually the case), so I could not get in, because I had given the keys to my friend, with instructions to leave them in the fridge for me. He had indeed done this, but I could not get in the front door, and therefore could not get to the fridge to let myself in.

My City North News job was waiting outside my house, being a Thursday, and as I had nothing better to do, I decided to start work immediately.

I called David (Choi Ki-Tak), and asked if he would like to help me deliver the newspapers. He and Namki (Park Nam-Ki) had been doing it for me while I was away in Korea and Japan. David said he would meet me at 1100, some three hours later. I told him I would wait for him.

I decided to go to my post office box at Toowong. Even though the key was inside my house, I did not need it to check the box. I had quite a lot of mail, as I had expected after being away for over one month. I read the mail on the way back to my home, then I met David at Roma Street station.

We returned to my home together and began delivering the newspapers. I told David many things about what I had seen and done on my trip.

Life soon returned to normal, and I began to think about preparing this book so I would have a permanent reminder of my first overseas adventure, not just for myself, but also for my friends to share.

So, although the real story ends here, there is still a little more to tell...

Day 36 (2005-08-31) / Day 37 (2005-09-01) / Epilogue
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