The First Page

On boxing day 2004 I was in Kennilworth (North of Brisbane) camping. My friends and I were trying to decided whether or not we would stay at the Kennilworth for new years eve, go to the beach, or go home. We went into town and we saw the newspapers - there had been a tsunami, thousands were dead. Every day that we went into town, the number of people who had been killed grew. Every day I wished there was something I could do. On new year's eve, we started driving back to Brisbane in the morning. When I got into mobile range, I had a call from my mum. She said that one of our family friends who is a nurse, Suzy, was going to Indonesia with an aid organisation, and they might be looking for more medical people. She said if I wanted to go, she'd fund me. Of course I was interested I told her, when would we be leaving? Tonight at approximately midnight. Ummm, well I haven't had a shower in a few days, that's not a lot of time to prepare.... Matthew (my husband), thought it was something we needed to discuss. Matt is sort of the brains of our little family. He has a lot of general knowledge. He knew some things about Banda Aceh that I was not aware of. For instance he asked me, did I know that there had been a lot of fighting in Banda Aceh? Was I aware it had been closed to white people for awhile? Did I know about the religious persecution that occurred there? Nope, this was all news to me. After some discussion (pulled over on the side of the road in the glass house mountains so that we would have mobile range to call my mum back), we decided I would go. I called my mum and said she could book me a ticket.

We drove directly to my mum's house. Conveniently, I had accidently taken my passport camping. A rare occurence (it has only happened once). I showered, mum washed my clothes and booked me in to see the doctor for some shots, and matt drove around buying mosquito nets, mosquito repellant etc. It was a mad, mad rush. Then they drove me to the airport. I never went via my own house. It was straight from camping, to gone. Not knowing what conditions we would be facing, we were told not to bring anything we couldn't leave behind. So in the way of cameras, I took only one lense (a 50mm) and our old OM-1 (which is fully manual, you have to set the aperture and shutter speed yourself). I figured, I probably wouldn't have time to use it anyway. When the year 2005 came, I was sitting on a plane with Suzy and some other people I didn't know that well. It was one more year, in a series of years, that Matt and I did not see the new year in together.
-----
ON THE PLANE 1.1.06
Details blur
Into grey
As I fly
Far away
You are safe
I am sound
I touch air
You touch ground