My Australia | visit no. 1
Anew round of Alphabe- Thursday began this week. For the first letter of our Alphabet my only choice was Australia. One of the seven continents of our Earth and the country that I lived and worked in for three years and I still miss it. I guess I will just have to fit in another Australia visit. For your information before you
Back in the 90s I worked for an international freight forwarder, who ran an exchange program, having employees work in different countries for a certain time. When I applied for the program I expected to get transferred to the US, because I wanted to go to an English-speaking country. Imagine my surprise when they offered to me: Melbourne, Australia. At the time, 1994 mind you, I knew where to find Australia on the map, English is their language and they drive on the wrong side of the road. That was it. The whole extent of my knowledge about Australia.
It also was only my second (or third) ever flight, my only one before this was a vacation on Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). A 4 hour flight not to be compared with the roughly 24 hours incl. stop to Melbourne. The flight with Malaysian Airlines included a few hour stop in Kuala Lumpur before arriving one early August morning into Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne. I was picked up by my future manager of the airfreight department, Eddie Borg, and brought to my hotel in downtown Melbourne. Here I stayed for the first two weeks until I found a place to stay. Together with my colleague, Lynn Macklin, I checked out a lot of apartments while living in the hotel. I was astonished how different the way houses are built in Australia compared to Europe. For obvious reasons they are a lot more lightweight, which is o.k. because of the warmer weather. In any case, I found my first apartment in Essendon, half way between downtown Melbourne and Tullamarine, the part of town I had to go for work. And I also got a very small and old car.
During our time in Williamstown I got Cassie, my cat, and Ute got Lisa, her daughter. Unfortunately in 1997 I had to leave Australia. I had already extended my stay for a third year and it was not possible to do that again. Rules and regulations called law. So, while I went to Atlanta, GA, Ute returned to Germany – for a while. As did I a little later. Today Ute and Lisa are back in Australia and I am back in the US. But in between I squeezed in an Australia visit three times. And I am pretty sure there will be a few more in the future.
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