Home Again

My holiday to Australia is over! I had the best three weeks of my life. The journey itself was gruelling, almost 3 hours by train then 21 hours by plane is not for the faint hearted but it was worth it. The  time spent with my brother and his family and my aunt Lana was wonderful. The country is amazing, vast and hot and full of flies but so amazing. I saw kangaroos, koalas, wombats, sand dunes higher than a house, parks larger than a town and spaces wider and more open than anything I could contemplate. Perth is a hot and dry place with mainly sandy areas but it is also a beautiful place. The jacaranda trees are especially beautiful and the flowers are colourful and mainly familiar, like geraniums, petunias, begonias and roses which all flower year round because of the climate. But the most wonderful thing about the country is the family I met there. I grew to love my brothers children and my aunts grandchildren very quickly. I met friends I hadn't seen in over thirty years and chewed over some memories of my teenage years with them. I went on a dinner cruise down the Swan River, 4 wheel driving over sand dunes, pic-nicking in the park, driving through the bush and mall shopping. I made memories I will treasure for ever and had experiences that I will never forget but that time spent with my family cannot be measured. It was precious and wonderful and all those other adjectives and I can't put a price on it. That's why when I had to leave, I cried like a baby! It was so hard to leave them all behind, knowing  I wouldn't see them again. That's the tyranny of distance, as my brother said to me, and it gave a bittersweet ending to whole trip because as much as I wanted to go home to my English family I also didn't want to leave my Australian family. So would I do it again? In a heartbeat!