Sunday, 6th November, 2005
The day firmly took hold when we landed at 5.50pm at Sydney, Australia. The plane took a turn around the city on its approach and we got a view over the harbour and picked out the Opera House (looked very small!) and the bridge (looked very black!).
We wandered through customs and then reclaimed our bags. The Detector Dogs were busy at work very small beagle-type dogs, wearing a smart DD uniform (!) and snuffling their way through the luggage, quietly jumping up on the trolleys and picking their way through.
Right beside where Anne was standing, it suddenly sat down beside a bag and the owner was summoned by the handler. There was half a packet of biscuits inside … which was confiscated.
Our bags passed muster. We then had to slot everything through another x-ray, this time with the express purpose of looking for any ‘produce’ presumably anything that the dogs might have missed.
Out on the concourse we were met by Dorothy den Hollander an Australian cousin of Annes and a scarily sprightly 88!!! Dorothy stood awaiting us at the arrivals gate, having spent the day at a lecture series at the university. We got a bit of a taste of Sydney on our way back to Dorothy’s house as she whisked us away to the leafy suburb of Woolahara at an alarming speed in her black BMW. Most of the trees are evergreen so Sydney was looking decidedly leafy; the jacarandas are all blue, laden with petals and each one has a blue shadow beneath it where petals have fallen.
Dorthy’s house is called Kilrie which has been in her family since the 1940s, prior to that she was in Melbourne … at another Kilrie near Sandringham … and she also lived for a time at Kilrie in Fife. She has a small flat at the back of the house which is currently occupied by Dorothy’s daughter Crecy, husband Jeremy and children Fraser and Fenna.
We settled down to catch up over a glass or two of champagne and some smoked salmon sandwiches.
We didn’t stay up late, piling into bed not long after 9.