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    To The Isles Of Brit
    To The Isles Of Brit
    To The Isles Of Brit
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    To The Isles Of Brit

    By Lindsay Johannsen

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Being an account of me and the Missus’ random wanderings about the UK circa 1998. It comes complete with genuine Aussie observations and insights, pithy comments and rambling asides, as we show you the sights, soak up the “culcha”, have adventures and land on distant rellies unannounced. I took plenty of photos too, but I can’t find the buggers. And the Web has better ones anyway – by the umpty.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLindsay Johannsen
    Release dateApr 2, 2016
    ISBN9781310082313
    To The Isles Of Brit
    Author

    Lindsay Johannsen

    There's not a lot to tell really, though on reflection, looking back on it through the lens of one's recollections and memories, the whole business seems more akin to an extended Huckleberry Finn adventure, but set in the vastness of Central Australia. Born, raised and schooled in Alice Springs; taken from the leafy glades of learning mid-way through Year-eight to work at my father's remote little copper mine; later employed for some years driving his cattle-hauling road trains – him having pioneered road trains and the cattle hauling business (see "Kurt Johannsen: A Son of the Red Centre"). Married in the fullness of time; built a bush homestead on the northern edge of the Simpson Desert and raised a family there, all while running a small tungsten mining business and provisioning the hundred or so Aboriginal people local to the area who adopted us. Sold our mine and homestead a few years after the kids had flown the coop, acquired a forty foot (12m) touring coach, converted it into a big steel-wheel mobeel Palaise-de-passion motor home and took to the roads of this great land of Oz - in the main visiting our offspring (most of whom had moved to coastal regions), our grandchildren generally and a couple of great grandies - plus various friends and associates from years gone by. Then, as time went by, my Bride my Precious Lamb and Flower of the Early Mid Morning contracted dementia and, after a period of steady but inevitable deterioration, she passed away from its effects aged 85 - in June 2018. I don't write much any more, but I did convert a short fictional love poem written earlier into a summary of it all - our meeting, our life together and my current state of mind ... in 200 words. "Life Sentence" it's called. It's in the list below. Please feel free to read it, with my compliments. L.J.

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      Book preview

      To The Isles Of Brit - Lindsay Johannsen

      To The Isles Of Brit

      Published by Lindsay Johannsen at Smashwords

      Copyright Lindsay Johannsen 2016

      Smashwords Edition Licence Notes.

      This story is available to you Free. I insist on maintaining my copyright, however, but until such time as I become staggeringly famous and amend this notice please feel free to reproduce, copy, disseminate or distribute it generally amongst your friends and/or enemies by whatever means you have at your disposal and to your heart’s content, provided this is done in a purely non-commercial manner and the story remains complete and in its original form. My preference, though, is for you to recommend to others that they should download

      To The Isles Of Brit from Smashwords for themselves,

      so enriching my life with a warm glow of satisfaction in lieu of monetary reward.

      Thank you.

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication Data:

      Author: Johannsen, Lindsay Andrew

      Title: To The Isles Of Brit

      Cover art and design bungled by the author.

      Also published by the same author at Smashwords:

      The novels: McCullock’s Gold and The Cassidy Chronicles

      …plus some short stories and other rubbish.

      To order the paperback version of McCullock’s Gold or contact the author please visit

      www.vividpublishing.com.au/lajohannsen

      To The Isles Of Brit

      From the desque of

      L. Andrew Johannsen RSVP, PhD (Cam).*

      * (See last few paras.)

      ===========

      Our great UK adventure actually started in the Darwin airport terminal. There a uniformed flunkey at this gate-thing said we had to step aside for a security check.

      "Don’t try out your legal jargon on me, sonny I told the young upstart. We’re heading to the UK for an important meeting with Caroline Flinte MP. She’s the member for Pissington Down or someplace and is on standby in her office by this river thing, waiting to see us."

      Well, that certainly did the trick. Arm twisted behind the back; straight through Security past the escalators into the Duty Free – except that it wasn’t the Duty Free, it was The Back Room; no chairs, no furniture, just a big counter for dissecting the luggage and a couple of side rooms for strip searches – big girl needing a shave standing by the door marked ‘Ladies’.

      And all manner of long-lost items turned up when they emptied our bags: Sunday jocks and socks (holey ones), dead beetles, parking tickets from the last trip to Surfers Paradise, assorted B&B napkins, silverware, crockery etc. But what could they have been looking for? …priceless Aboriginal Heritage stuff, perhaps? ...like a real boomerang or something?

      Whatever the case, they soon realised their mistake. And so, after being left to repack everything ourselves, it was up the escalator and off to beautiful Koala Lumper – where for some reason they parked our plane down the wrong end of the runway.

      To get to the terminal building from there we had to catch a bus, following which the driver seemed to head off through some slums. Then he suddenly stopped and waved everyone off. This was the terminal!

      We apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused you, the loudspeakers were saying, after first rabbitting away in Rastafarian or something for a while, but we seem to have run out of terminal space, so we parked your aircraft up the other end of the aerodrome.

      Once inside we learned (according to the big glossy signage, anyway), that after levelling out several cubic kilometres of oil palm plantations and a number of villages, a whole new airport complex complete with palatial terminal buildings was nearing completion. And they were sparing no expense; vast concourses were planned, ivory escalators, gold plated walkways...

      Toilets with bowls.

      In due course we were taken to our overnight accommodation and the next morning we were delivered back there, following which we found ourselves stepping up into the big Seven Four with about half a million other cattle-class rabble. The real surprise, however, was that (at the time, anyway), Malaysian had about 100mm more leg-room between the seats compared to Qaintarse and Bruitish Air. I mean it doesn’t sound much, but around 3.00 am, when you’re trying to stretch your legs in the hope of preventing your deep veins from spontaneously thrombosing it can make a considerable difference.

      We arrived at Heathrow around 5 pm London time after flying all the way from KL in daylight, with our route having taken us along the Persian Gulf and over Lebanon. At Heathrow they parked us somewhere up the back again, at what (according to the signage) was Terminal 4. I could only conclude, however, that this was not the first class section, as the whole place seemed to be constructed of chipboard panels held together with ducting tape.

      Not too many tourists will be looking over it a thousand years from now, I’d guess, as per Stonehenge and the White Tower. But, like Ghengis Khan and the Roman Empire, the Brits are probably already in decline anyway.

      There wasn’t much evidence of this at the money exchange window, however. There a flinty-eyed gentleman of the heathen persuasion rapidly converted an amazing amount of our hard-earned’s into several colourful small-denomination notes and odd-looking coins of the local currency, most of which we had to use as a train fare into London.

      As it happened, our preferred choice of accommodation at Eccleston Square was unavailable, due to our travel bookings having been

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