HOME, HAGGIS AND HONEYMOONS - A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME...

The story of our eventual arrival in Adelaide is a very long, bizarre and convoluted one. Suffice to say, it became so strange and, at times, beyond comprehension, that I was compelled to chronicle the events in a book, as yet incomplete, and with the working title, Home Haggis And Honeymoons...

Y'see, I knew that would pique your interest. 

What transpired beforehand, commencing in January and February of 2008, where Australia and more specifically my sister's house in Newcastle NSW and my aunt's place in Ipswich Qld, which were part of a two week visit in a broader six week itinerary that took in Easter Island and Tahiti, culminated in something entirely and inexplicably different.

The upshot of it all was that we never actually reached Easter Island or the Tahitian atoll of Mo'orea where our dream wedding was to take place - this all bought and paid for in advance - no, we ended up stranded in Sydney instead on that most patriotic of occasions, Australia Day. Which, in and of itself, is a short story worth telling.

No matter what we tried to do and how we tried to do it, the universe would drop a very solid portcullis in our pathway and after many attempts at either removing or charging through the obstacle, we grudgingly and oftentimes very emotionally, elected to divert around the impediment and stumble through the doorways that did deign to open up for us.

These impediments, many of them, would manifest throughout the trip items such as botched visas (or lack thereof, courtesy of an inept Joburg Travel Agency) or luggage being sent to a city other than the one we arrived in, wallets being lost in Australia's busiest city on its busiest night then found again and many less significant but no less disruptive or aberrant events.

We felt like pawns being moved against our will on some gigantic chess board where each move contradicted the planned strategy we had already mapped out and try as we did to influence the hand that was poised to pick us up and deposit us on an altogether unfamiliar square, this proved futile. We began to simply accept our fate, stopped fighting the inexorably spinning wheels of the universe and let ourselves drop into the slipstream of wherever the hell that would lead us. Acceptance. Acquiescence. But always the curiosity of why...

I know Rabbie Burns, Scotland's poet laureate would simply say in a sage brogue, "The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay..." but come on, Robert - what the fuck! 

And coupled to the insanity of recreating an entirely new trip that didn't include fascinatingly mysterious spiritual workshops on Easter Island or traditional island wedding ceremonies on an idyllic coral atoll in the Pacific, we had to deal with the massive time lag between Oz and South Africa just trying to get some semblance of recompense or commitment from our hopeless and, it would eventually transpire, devious, travel agent. We were stuck in Australia. The rest of the trip was in the bin so we'd make the most of it and just deal with the fallout when we got back to Jozi.

And thus, instead of azure oceans surrounding us 'neath swaying palms looking out across an endless horizon over little umbrella-bedecked cocktails, we found ourselves in a camper van (or RV for the more abbreviatedly inclined) in the middle of the Simpson Desert just outside Alice Springs. 

....where, it has to be mentioned, we became intimately acquainted with feral critturs whose reputation precedes them in the great red landmass - no, not wild camels - but flies, millions of the little bastards that would relentlessly pester us whenever we'd venture forth from the RV to explore some exotic location or other.

Ironically, prior to this, we'd been enormously amused, while gazing from the cabin of the Merc Vito, at a stream of tourists emerging from a tour bus, all replete with full-face fly nets like an envoy of some weird beekeeping cult...Apiarists Anonymous? Oh how we laughed at them.

An hour later while sprinting back down the dry river bed at Simpson Gap, windmilling our hands over our heads to beat off the kamikaze fly swarms, oh how we understood them...

As luck would have it, a little while later on the trip, while traversing the West McDonnell Ranges, we came upon some locals who were to introduce us to the that most wondrous of unguents, Desert Dwellers fly repellant, which, we soon found out created some kind of X-Men type mutant energy barrier around you which caused the flies to drop into an attack formation buzz toward you with malign intent then swerve away at the last moment when the Desert Dwellers force field made its presence known. To this day we still have tubs of the stuff from that trip. Although, it has to be said, the city flies are much fewer and further between thank goodness.

I'll save the rest of the yarn for the book, suffice to say we had a magical time driving round the Outback, exploring, getting quietly and spectacularly married in the shadow of Uluru but there was one occasion when the whole trip had just got to me and I spat my dummy while railing at the skies, yelling: "Just give me one, unambiguous sign that what we are doing is okay and we are meant to be here then I'll shut up and accept it all - no more questions asked!"

That was when we saw the sign to Honeymoon Gap, turned onto that road in the middle of the Australian wilderness and saw a huge white painted name on the tarred road surface. It simply said "PAUL."

True to my celestial promise, I made no more profane utterances.

It's pretty hard to argue with that especially when your whole body is awash with goosebumps...

We have photographs of me in the Honeymoon Gap road with this painted graffito in the foreground.

For the rest, I guess I'll just have to finish the darn book...