And we have landed...

After a year and a half of trying to get a visa for Australia, I am finally here.

Dane and I left London on the 1st of October, and spent a glorious month with my family in South Africa. I loved every minute of it, but it also reminded me on what I have been missing out on while living in London. Family dinners, Christmases, meeting my brother's girlfriend, rugby games, braais - all the things I love about my home and my family. I started having doubts about my decision to move and things that I was once certain of became a little blurry. But on the 30th of October I boarded the plane from Durban to Johannesburg and stuck to my guns. I would never have known if this is the right decision or not if I hadn't gotten on the plane - only time will tell, but I need to be in Australia to know if moving to Australia was a good move or not.

So, after many tears and sad goodbyes, we left for Johannesburg. My rugby team, the Sharks, were playing in the Currie Cup Final against Western Province that afternoon, so Dane and I set up camp at the bar to watch the game. We didn't get to see the end, but we heard the cheers from our boarding gate - my team won :) After a long delay, we finally left Johannesburg for Sydney. Our flight had been delayed by 2 1/2 hours, so we had to change our connecting flight from Sydney to Brisbane too, and we nearly missed that one as well. We rushed as quickly as we could from the international terminal, through security and customs, got our luggage, checked it in again and with 20 minutes to spare before boarding started, we joined the queue for the shuttle bus to the domestic terminal. And there we waited. The buses weren't going because there was a storm coming. I have never heard anything so ridiculous, and I lived in London where sunshine seems to shut public transport down.

The bus collected us 5 minutes after our boarding started, and we only just made it to our flight in time. Luckily the 'storm' had also meant that our plane wasn't taking off until it cleared. We landed in good time, and were greated by Dane's brother and his kids, all dressed up for Halloween. In the hecticness of our flights, I had totally forgotten the date, but at least our delayed flights meant that the kids got to go trick-or-treating before coming to the airport.

And so, after 14 hours of flying, here we are. Day 1 in Australia is just about done and I need to find some way of making my new home just that - home...