The Hazards of African Swine Flu

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Today we fly to Broome.

It seems that the machine they use to x-ray the checked baggage at Kununurra airport isn’t working. No problem we’re told, they’ll do a visual inspection of one of our two bags instead - “a sample”. Hmmm. Terrorists and drug runners this way please. Just as well we packed all our explosives in the other bag. Most of the things in the "sample" bag they’ve picked are Issy's, so she’s shown into a back room with it by a burly security guard. She comes back out a few minutes later. She was expecting him to unpack everything and go over it with a fine tooth comb, but she says all he did was swab it like they usually do to your carry-on when they think you look a bit shifty and might be carrying some heroin. It seems that we could have packed our bazookas in there after all.

I think it might be our young Filipino head cabin crew member's first day on the job. He looks very nervous, and when he gets half way through the welcome he forgets the script. He looks like he’s about to burst into tears. He takes a few deep breaths and is then able to continue, but only just. He then launches even more nervously into the safety briefing, but he’s now so embarrassed that he spends most of it holding the safety card over his face. As soon as he’s finished he makes a dive for the bathroom. I hope his day improves from here.

There are no flight magazines in the seat pockets, something to do with COVID I think. No problem there though. Air North has instead provided us all with a laminated sheet about the hazards of African Swine Flu. It says that we’ll be in big trouble if we don’t declare our pork sausages, jerky and salami when we come into Oz. Huh? I thought Air North only served Darwin and the Kimberley, so I'm not too sure why this might be relevant. Anyway, there’s nothing else to look at, so I turn the sheet over to read the warning in a bunch of other languages. I think it’s important to learn something every day, and today I’ve learnt that the word "salami" is the same in Malay, Vietnamese and Tagalog (whatever that might be) as it is in English, and that the Malay words for "jerky" and "sausage" are "jerki" and "sosej". I'm sure this new found knowledge will come in handy at some point.

We collect our hire car from Broome airport and take a leisurely drive to our accommodation, which we booked only a few days ago. It only became available when half the country had to cancel their travel plans due to COVID lockdowns. It sounded like quite a step up from our original accommodation - the backpacker pub with the wet t-shirt competition. It seems that the proprietor, a gent named Ross, was dreading our arrival. He says that our booking came through via a website that he’s never heard of called Trip.com. He tells us that he’s been trying to contact them and us ever since, because despite their assurances to us to the contrary he’s booked solid and can’t fit us in. He tells us that these booking advisories usually come through with the guests' contact details, but in this case all he got was a phone number in a city in China and a spam email address. The only thing that identified us as us was our surname. Hmmmm. This is not good. He says all he could do was send them an email, which he did a couple of days ago, but he’s heard nothing back.

I look at my phone. We have had a few missed calls this morning, but no messages. I ring the number. It is indeed Trip.com. It’s a Sydney number but the accent on the other end of the line suggests that I am probably talking to someone somewhere in outback China. She tells me that our booking has been cancelled. Well that’s nice to know, now that we’re already here. She says that all is well however, as they've managed to get us in somewhere else. When she gives us the name the look on Ross’ face suggests we‘d probably be better off sleeping in our car. I’m ready to kill someone. I start sprouting expletives about Chinese booking sites, so there’s yet another black mark against me in Premier Xi's little book, the second in two days. I’m now sure to be at the front of the execution queue when the invasion comes.

Fortunately for us, Ross is possibly the world's most helpful person. He rings a dozen or so places around town for us to see if they can fit us in, but they’re all booked solid. We may yet be sleeping in our car. In the meantime Issy's iPad seems to be suggesting that a vacancy has suddenly become available at the best gig in town, the Cable Beach Club Resort. Huh? There has to be a catch. This place hasn’t had a vacancy for months. Ross rings them to confirm and then drives there with us. We appear to have not only dodged a bullet, but landed firmly on our feet at the same time. I ring Trip.com back ready to give them yet another earful, but before I have a chance to launch into it they agree to not only give us a refund for Ross' abode, but to cover the difference between it and the cost of our very salubrious newfound digs. So it seems that in the space of a few days our accommodation has gone from a backpacker pub with a wet t-shirt competition, to a luxury beachfront resort, and if that wasn't enough, an obscure Chinese booking site has now agreed to subsidise a fair chunk of the cost. Huh? No one's this lucky, certainly not us.

If it wasn’t enough that Ross has given up half his afternoon trying to help us, it now seems that we’ve inadvertently pinched his sunglasses. We head off to the local bottle shop to buy him some grog, and then head back to his place to hand it over and return his stolen shades. People like him restore your faith in the goodness of humanity.

We head out to watch the sunset. Cable Beach is a massive expanse of pure white sand. I’m not sure what I expected, but whatever it was this is better. Issy said she fell in love with Darwin, but I’m suspecting from the "oohs" and "aahs" that she might now have found a new love. This seems to be Broome party central. I looks like there was no chance of getting a seat at a bar here unless you turned up mid-afternoon. There seem to be two distinct groups of people - grey nomads and nubile female European and South American backpackers (Issy says there are also some male backpackers). The backpackers are practising twirling fire sticks and balancing on loose strands of string suspended between trees. I hope they don’t get too ensconced in their activities and forget to watch the main show. I'm certainly at risk of getting too ensconced watching them and missing the sunset. The grey nomads, well they’ve gone for the slightly more leisurely option of just sitting back and soaking in the stunning scene.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Nice digs
Wow, what a fantastic story!

[DaveandIssy]

Lucky
Boy did we get lucky!