Flight To Tasmania

Time to talk about the Tasmanian experience with Oliver seeing as it took me nearly seven years to actually get him out of the country and to my birthplace. And I haven’t blogged regularly for so long. We flew quite late at night from Denpasar to Melbourne, business class. I had always said that this would be such a special thing that we would fly with a bit of comfort. So we did. We made it through immigration in Denpasar without any hassles even though I was as nervous as a nun in a sexy lingerie shop. Oliver was fairly excited but the flight didn’t leave till midnight. By the time we boarded he was worn out. Sitting in the seats he discovered the flip out television and he so desperately wanted to watch it. Before the plane had leveled out though, he was sound asleep and remained so until I had to wake him at the ungodly hour of 6.30 am when we arrived in Melbourne. As usual I had not slept a wink. Bleary eyed and even more nervous than any nun could ever be we trudged to face the Australian immigration officials. I had Oliver’s passport. It contained the necessary visa. But I was still worried. Would they actually let us in or would we spend the night in some small room awaiting deportation back to Indonesian? Am I just paranoid? A very pleasant young woman stamped my passport, flicked through Oliver’s and said in matter of fact way, “You need to go over to that counter. We need to check Oliver’s passport.” I thought, this is it – what the hell is the matter? Are we about to be arrested? I was so scared. I stood before the counter so close to losing it. The guy behind the counter used some magnification device to look at Oliver’s passport and quite casually said to the person I’d handed it to, “This one is OK.” Oliver obviously was oblivious to all this but I literally dragged him to the baggage collection area from that counter in case they changed their minds. I did notice however that all the other Indonesians on the flight were having their passports scrutinized in a similar fashion. As we waited for our bags I rang my mum and told her we were on Australian soil. Funny I didn’t burst into tears this time as I had done in both Mataram as we left for Singapore and in Jakarta after I had seen the visa in Oliver’s passport. Too tired maybe. We were booked to fly to Tasmania about lunchtime but when I went to the check-in counter there was a much earlier flight so we ran to the gate in order to make it. I will never ever forget the feeling as Oliver and I walked from the plane at Launceston airport to meet Mum and Dad who were waiting there for us. I cried again but I had my sunglasses on this time. Nearly seven years this journey had taken and so much trauma and we had finally made it for just 7 short days…