So many of us can’t wait to fly again

The world needs fresh Australian blood trammelling its earth. Instagram @jackyaboud

How could you tell an Aussie overseas? Those crinkles around the eyes from a lifetime of squinting in the blaring light. The smile when they talked. Good teeth, strong bones, sun-damaged skin. Their propensity for always sitting in the front of the cab and chucking their own bags in the boot. The endearing way they gravitated towards each other with the connecting catchcry, “Where you from?” Their habit of always looking up the footy scores at odd hours and searching for the pub that screened the big matches.

In London they’d strike up innocently cheery conversations with wary locals on the Tube, giving them the horror of the full frontal, unlowered eye. They were easy and friendly with wait staff and cabbies; not interested in the dance of leverage and power. They’d wipe and swipe, especially around a kitchen sink, because they’d spent a lifetime clearing before the cockroaches and ants colonised any space. And they were determined not to be water-wasters or litterbugs, wherever they were, as all those lessons from childhood came home to roost.

There was a snobbishness about good coffee which they could get in abundance back home – and told anyone who’d listen. They’d cling to their shorts and had a propensity for bare feet. They’d never dress properly for the plane, never smartly or warmly enough; never dress quite adequately for colder climates because they’d never learnt the secret of layers or the joy of an enveloping coat. And so many seemed to have a naïvely sweet pride in their own country, best place on Earth, Godzone.

Now most Aussies overseas have gone rogue, the habits of new localities growing over them through the sheer length of time they’ve been there. The world needs fresh Australian blood trammelling its earth, a new breed of plucky ambassador in that grand rite of passage – the Big Overseas Trip. Qantas has announced it will restart overseas flights for the fully vaccinated. As countries and directives firm up many of us will be fleeing, and in droves. Because once we were the most travelled nation on Earth, yet it now feels like much of the world is cranking up again – but without us.

As an expat, I’d look askance at many things back in my homeland. The small-minded politics, the fear of difference, the desecration of our land’s astonishing beauty, the deification of sport at the expense of culture, the treatment of our indigenous people. But oh, the choked-up joy of heading home – it got me every time. I loved seeing the Aussie short-term travellers in the Heathrow queue for the red eye; they’d stick out a mile. The ratty, bleached blond hair of the young Aussie men; the sheer sweetness of them as they checked in their surfboards (and what optimism they demonstrated in that land of muted waves and pebbled beaches). The naïve charm of the older Aussie couples striking up conversations with anyone around them; their quiet pride as they chatted about the weather back home with their dry, chuckly humour I missed so much.

The gladness would swell as we winged closer to the great southern land. Sometimes tears pricked as we flew over the vastness like no other country from the air; all those beautiful ochre reds and bleached whites. As we emerged from the airport we’d squint into the hurting glare and smell gums mixed with the sea on the salty air, and exhale. Home at last, enveloped in its very particular light, which our skin would drink up like the desert with rain. Australia, perhaps, makes us all photophiles – lovers of the light.

Now other countries are roaring ahead as Australia emerges tentatively, step by step, from its barricaded existence. So many of us can’t wait to fly again. To welcome our locked-out expats home at last, and to become those distinctive Aussie travellers overseas once more. For anyone unvaxxed, it’s going to be a shrunken little world they’re ensconced in.