A Suitcase Full of Boomerangs

By Fil Bufalo

A Suitcase Full of Boomerangs is essentially a romp around the Republic of Ireland. Tiny boomerangs are bequeathed to colourful characters encountered throughout the three-week round trip. Narrated in the first person, the protagonist and two of her sisters manage to have a ball as they traverse the width and breadth of Ireland in a big black jeep filled with suitcases full of boomerangs. This book of travel laughs, mishaps and adventures is a light-hearted, feel-good read, intended to whisk the armchair traveller far away to another time and place – the magic that will always be Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528908535

Fil Bufalo

Fil Bufalo has been writing forever, but only recently taken up writing in a genre she is finding hard to resist. Humorous travel narrative writing. Fil is a proud Australian, and she loves nothing more than to travel overseas, distributing tokens of Australian memorabilia to people all over the world. Fil dabbles in art, mosaics, gardening, and poetry writing. She is an extrovert who loves to have a chat with anyone who cares to listen. Lastly, Fil loves children and the ocean. In that order.

Book preview

About the Author

Fil Bufalo has been writing for a lifetime—on the sand, on slate and in shorthand. An animated storyteller and accomplished raconteur, she has gathered all her thoughts, philosophies and musings on life into a bonfire of words and taken the plunge with a match.

Dedication

To Margaret and Pearl—of Blarney Nook, Venus Bay.

Copyright Information ©

Fil Bufalo (2021)

The right of Fil Bufalo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528908528 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528908535 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

Everyone who listened to my stories and persuaded me to write them down.

Chapter 1

That’s the Tarmac Done

You could be excused for imagining you were spiralling down gently into a sea of deep, deep green. Calling all Jumblies. They went to sea in a sieve they did, in a sieve they went to sea. Their heads were green, and their hands were blue, in a sieve they went to sea.

Swirling, undulating head waves of treeless, chlorophyll-choked hills were rolling out for miles in either direction below—a giant’s face, punctuated with a more than generous smattering of green mounds. No, I wasn’t hallucinating, and no, I hadn’t gotten ‘hammered’ on cheap crème-de-menthe at one of the many Heathrow bars before boarding the plane. Close, but not quite. I had lapsed momentarily into my penultimate daydream of this short plane trip from the largest to the third largest island in Europe. Great Britain to Ireland.

In my musings, I had visions of the giant in question, as the great mythical Irish hunter-warrior, ‘yer man’ himself—Fionn MacChail—hell-bent on perfecting his finishing touches to the face of Ireland. Fionn would have been exhausted from fashioning his magnum opus—the Giant’s Causeway further north. These rolling hills below would have been child’s play putty in his hands by comparison.

I could feel myself drifting off in my wild imaginings of what magic and revelations of Irish folklore this trip might unravel, when a sudden interruption by the captain put a firm stop to my castle-building in the air. In a commanding tone, he was urging all passengers to sit upright and alert in your seat, in the unlikely event of an emergency. (Why do these pilots always look at the glass half empty?) Mention an emergency and you are sure to precipitate one. I would be honoured to take the moral high ground and speak for all passengers (on my plane that is, not all passengers likely to be up in the air at the exact same time as myself) authoritatively, asserting that the location of the life jackets was already common knowledge. (Under our seats, in case they need to be retrieved!)

Old habits die hard. The captain, clearly comfortable with the sound of his own boom-box echoing the body of the plane (and quite possibly the varied atmospheres of the entire universe) was still droning on—acutely aware of his hopelessly captive audience. I fancied I could detect more than a glint of Machiavellian delight in his penchant for inconveniencing passengers with that foghorn voice. Captain Interruption had little intention of keeping his monologue short and sweet. On he went…

Please ensure that your seatbelt is fastened low and tight around your hips in preparation for landing. Of course we would! I’d had plenty of practice in my lifetime of fastening things low and tight around my hips. I’d fastened belts of school uniforms every morning of my school life. I’d fastened seatbelts galore in all manner of vehicles, as well as countless safety belts on fun rides at fairs, harnesses when rock climbing and canoeing, and even belted up for a spot of white-water rafting in my younger days. As I grew older, I came to the slow realisation that there were other kinds of belts some adults liked to fasten low and tight—but I had steered well clear of these accessories. Yes. I was well versed with the function of the humble seatbelt.

It dawned on me I’d slipped back into daydream gear; I was in full throttle by now—the only way out being to live through it. I tried to focus on the parcel of land thousands of feet below me. Common sense told me it couldn’t be a large Irish lough—it was far too green and not flat enough. Neither could it be the ocean, because we had just left the Irish Sea trailing behind, still fiercely hugging England from all nooks and crannies and peninsulas. That only left land. Luscious, lolling green land. The ‘fifty shades of green’ canvas that epitomised the Emerald Isle. (Make that forty). Ireland. Eire, Hibernia—whatever you chose to call the beautiful, stark, undulating landscape below. It was green as green could be. No clumps of trees visible to the naked eye. No scrub, no vegetation of any description. Just rounded, bald green hills—and then suddenly, the dot of the airport, the soft thud of the landing on the cushioned tarmac—and we were down.

I should have been prepared for the sheer, stark beauty of the feathery drop. Having frequently delighted in the two-hour flight from Heathrow to Dublin, unfailingly, I was struck dumb with the raw beauty of the clean, calming, rolling hills, heralding the city, and caught unawares at touchdown. Had I been travelling in an Italian aeroplane, it would have been an entirely different homecoming.

As soon as any Italian plane’s wheels lock lips with the tarmac, the passengers abruptly cease rattling off their monotonal, nasally recitations of the rosary and begin shouting out congratulatory accolades to the pilots, clapping loudly and cheering wildly. A marathon of frenzied signing of the cross invariably begins, and the peculiarly Italian custom of shrieking, warbling like disoriented, inebriated birds, and thanking God for a safe landing has been known to continue well into the next full hour of disembarkation on some Italian flights.

I was glad the Italian nuns on board had today honoured their vow of silence.

The second thing to strike you as the plane descends into Dublin International is the compactness of the airport. Compared to other capital cities, Dublin airport is positively tiny. A mere speck in the hills—a bump on the face of Ireland. Possibly, the airport is small, because the country itself is so small, with only five million residents inhabiting the spiritual space. We were gliding along the slick grey runway to the gate, when the captain (who had definitely not followed suit with the nuns in their vow of silence) found his voice for strike three, this time reverberating through the cabin, imploring all passengers to stay calm and not to panic. He was playing his cards close to his chest, as this was the only slither of information disclosed.

I looked around to my left and then to my right, but was unable to spot anything amiss in my immediate vicinity. Although the flight from London to Dublin was considered international, the plane was the size of a domestic airline, and we were consequently less than cattle-class comfortable in our seats. (Read really, really squashed, and think rats in a trap!) Only if you craned your neck backwards as far as it would stretch, would you be able to see exactly what mischief was afoot in the back stalls of the plane. The nose section was easier to view, and it was all quiet on the Western front down there. (Mostly sleeping Italian nuns and priests on a pilgrimage to Ireland, exhausted from continuously rising at the crack of dawn to recite the ‘Office.’)

I was privy to this gem of inside info because I had been chatting with one of the nuns at Heathrow, and she had been excited to discover I was Australian—because she had a distant cousin in Sydney. Who didn’t? I hadn’t wanted to dishearten her, and I had no opportunity to mention that I lived in Melbourne and not Sydney, as she moved quickly onto a heated one-way discussion on Ireland’s position on abortion. It wasn’t my most favourite subject, so I feigned fatigue, and apologised for averting my eyes for forty winks. (The plane was delayed so we had all been cooped up in the waiting-lounge, ready to board at the flashing of the ‘Now boarding’ sign).

The nun had been gracious but had continued to honour her vow of inane chatter and chin-wagged onto my eye-closed face until the rest of her clan approached us and dragged the nun away from me. They knew her well. I thought she would have made a great political candidate, so strong was she in her stance on abortion.

I put to bed my recollections of the activist nun—my final daydream of the flight and concentrated instead on the implications of the captain’s urgings. Stay calm and don’t panic! I’d heard whisperings of escape-rooms, where participants were granted an hour to solve a series of puzzles using limited clues provided, in an attempt to escape from locked rooms. Perhaps they were extending this thrill-seeking pastime to modes of transport as well?

If some entrepreneurial investor wanted to branch out from rooms to planes, short two-hour flights would be a perfect choice and provide a ready, captive audience. As I surveyed the plane from my limited vision position, it seemed to me that nearly every other person on the flight was travelling as a couple or as a group of friends. Most were all busily whispering to each other, clasping hands and puzzling over the strange message from the Captain, and generally acting panic-stricken and overwhelmed. Since I was travelling solo, I had no one to latch onto and no one to shake and yell out at, What does he mean? Why do we need to stay calm? Is this a riddle or a euphemism for Code Red?

Settling on a distractive and diversionary tactic, I slowly eased the menu card from my seat pocket and attempted to study the ingredients and GI ratings of the snacks and meals on offer. I performed this delicate operation with a surgeon’s precision, as if the seat pocket was booby-trapped. Calmness and composure were my orders to myself. I had committed to memory the slogan, Keep calm and carry on. This ploy worked, in that I forgot for a few precious seconds that I was going to die alone on a plane, but it also just made me hungrier. I wished I could recall the last time I’d partaken of my most favourite meal of all time—stuffed peppers—or whether I’d paid the electricity bill in advance—but acrid fumes of fear were beginning to engulf me and I couldn’t think straight any more.

Suddenly, everyone and everything went quiet, and I risked a quick peek out of my window. I wanted to see the exact spot where we had ground to a halt.

I shouldn’t have looked. I should have played the ‘escape room’ game, kept the blinds down and waited patiently like the rest of the law-abiding passengers. I chastised myself for my impatience and resolved to obey the rules from here on. What I saw outside was a scene from a movie. Maybe that was it! Riddle solved. We were not on a tarmac in Dublin, Ireland, after all but settled on the set of a science fiction movie. The situation was becoming more mysterious by the minute.

Outside, I could see at least three flashing fire engines and police cars. I couldn’t hear any sirens, I just assumed they would be working overtime—loud and clear on the tarmac, as there was also a lot of movement outside the plane. The police cars were not lined up in an orderly fashion, so I further assumed ‘emergency’, and not just a practice drill for meeting royal dignitaries alighting planes.

Strangely enough, I didn’t feel nervous or worried, once the fact that we had landed safely on solid ground had sunk in. If there had been a problem with the plane up in the air, it would be highly unlikely that we would have landed so smoothly (or at all for that matter).

The flight attendants were still nowhere to be seen and we’d been grounded for at least fifteen minutes. No one had moved or stood up, and no terrorists had come rushing out of the cockpit with hostages of the gagged captain and co-pilot.

I didn’t really want to be the one to stand up first, but since no one was moving and the flight attendants had disappeared, I made an executive decision to get to my feet, on the pretence of retrieving my water bottle from the overhead cabinet. It was a fortuitous move as it turned out, because once I’d stood up and overly fussed with my stowed luggage, a few other brave-hearts followed my lead; pretty soon, everyone was on their feet, fear forgotten, fuelled with the collective mission to alight from the plane as soon as possible.

We were all shuffling from one foot to another in the cramped, narrow aisle, when the captain (so he was still alive, and not yet gagged, in that cockpit) made his fourth and final announcement for the day. This time he was long-winded and a fountain of information. Attention, all passengers, there was a slight problem with our landing this afternoon, but we are pleased to inform you that all potential issues have been resolved, and you may now disembark via the front stairs. Please disregard the fire trucks and police cars on the tarmac. They were alerted as a precautionary measure and will remain in their emergency positions until all passengers have reached the safety of the terminus. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we appreciate your having flown with us today. Good afternoon from the flight deck.

You would think they were doing us a favour, letting us off the plane. I turned to see who had courageously blurted out the collective sentiment, but everyone had their mouths closed and eyes averted. It had sounded like an older man’s voice, but then again, maybe someone was practising for an acting role and they thought they’d test the waters with the captive audience waiting to push their way out from the plane. I remembered reading that there was still some casting going on for Game of Thrones, most of which was being shot on location in Northern Ireland. Maybe the voice in the wilderness was a hopeful actor, coming to Ireland to audition for the part of Jon Snow—even though the filming was already well underway.

It didn’t really even matter in the end why the emergency services had been at Dublin airport this morning, or even why we had been delayed at both points of the journey. It had all ended well, with everyone on the plane safely exiting via the high, steel front stairs, and with the emergency services personnel having had the foresight to sit huddled in their vehicles and bide their time until the subdued crowd had surged past. That way, they could avoid a questioning barrage from any irate passengers. (And there were a few of them). The flight attendants, the Captain and his offsiders still had not been sighted, and no one was even mentioning them. In the back of my mind, I was changing tact on what had happened with the plane and wondering whether the whole scenario had been a DISPLAN procedure and that there had been nothing in the slightest amiss with the plane—even before we’d left England. But short of demanding answers from the ground staff, there was very little we could do.

Something fishy was definitely going on, but it wasn’t anything to do with us once we’d left the tarmac and crossed the threshold into the sanctity of the airport building. (There was a rumour that a late, disgruntled male passenger had raced out onto the tarmac after the plane he had a ticket for was whisking off down the runway—immediately activating a Code Red situation). Whatever did happen, it was not detailed information in which we would be invited to share. I shifted my gaze to the surrounds of the airport interior, and the variety of travellers from all walks of life surrounding, and to the front of me.

People travelling solo are an interesting, predictable bunch. In the case of walking in public places, somehow innately knowing to fall into silent step with any stranger walking to their left or right, and either to keep equal pace directly abreast of their fellow walker, or to fall in behind, single file, if the pace was too fast or too slow. We are wired for this behaviour. Couples out for a jaunt are usually much closer in their gait, and when it comes to groups and families, most of them are all over the shop.

It’s a little different at airports and shopping centres than it is for the public out for a leisurely stroll, as one always seems to be hauling assorted heavy bags around at airports. There was something else I was noticed about these airport crowds. All eyes were glued to their mobiles, as if expecting news that they had won the lottery, or that a new messiah had been born. I had no idea what they were really viewing, but it did get me thinking about the esteemed place of the revered mobile phone in our busy 24/7 lives.

Chapter 2

Line ’Em Up

I honestly have no idea how I lived without my iPhone in bygone days. Well, not only me, but every other man, woman or child (excluding babes in arms) in the queue to the passport stamping booth would probably mumble a stock reply when requested to name one thing they could not possibly live without. Arguably, in the not-too-distant past, most people would have guessed correctly that it would have been difficult to live without food, water or shelter—but gone are those days.

In a hierarchy of needs, the palm-clapped shiny slab of technology has taken over! Placebo effect gone viral. Whilst at university, I studied sociology and one of the few hazy recollections I have of theoretical proposals was the fascinating notion of ‘Attachment Theory.’ Basically, this esteemed thinker, Irving Goffman, proposed it to be human nature to cling to our cravings and exhibit territorial and possessive behaviour towards our attachments. Supposedly industrious Irving had done his homework on this intrinsically human condition, but the only example I can recall (and one that still remains close to my heart) was that of over-coveting one’s drink when in public.

If you happened to be nursing a beverage at a crowded table and an attempt was made to touch, move or, heaven forbid, sip said beverage, that would count as a catastrophe of monumental proportions. Or, as W.H. Auden would have it in his famously immortalised poem Four Weddings and a Funeral, ‘Nothing good now will ever come.’ Goffman was around in the fifties. Now, we hold onto our drinks for dear life, for fear of illegal substances being slipped into them. Times change, but people never really move on much.

I glanced around the queuing passengers to my left and then to my right, and not a single face was discernible. The babies were flat in their prams and bowed heads was the go with the crowd. Why, you ask? Simply because all available eyes were transfixed on the tiny screens. It was all very Goffman—territorial, yet no one was bothered with anyone else. No one dared touch anyone else’s phone. Tampering with a drink was one thing but take my phone, you take my life. You destroy and dehumanise me in an instance. This miniaturisation of technology was a bushfire gone wild in these parts. Nothing to do whilst shuffling the endless airport queue? Keep calm and look at your phone!

I couldn’t blame them. I was doing the same myself. The technology was a drug addiction—feasting and gorging one’s eyes on the tiny flashing screen. No age filters or borders applied here. The more earnest viewers amongst us were easily identifiable, as their bowing was always deeper than your casual phone bender. These people knew how to cut to the chase. The hand movements were also interesting. The hard-core Instagram and Tinder (not tender) scrollers were whirring and flicking their fingers flamboyantly across their screens from left to right like a coven of hardcore witches-gesturing wildly in mid-flight incantations. The casual scrollers, snap-chatters and uninitiated viewers—those within a five-mile radius of the city and surrounds feverishly searching for taxi and hotel locations with all that time to spare in the snail-paced line—were harder to isolate. They could have been up to anything on their phones, as they kept to themselves isolate, shuffling along inconspicuously.

More than likely, they were the native countrymen and women of the lines—conditioned into silence and minimal arm or finger flaying from way back in dark Irish history when the Irish had unwillingly shared their pavements and pubs with British soldiers. Folklore had it that ancestors of the Irish River dancers would tap-dance holding their upper bodies straight, keeping their hands hidden behind their backs, deterring passing British soldiers from detecting any movement as they marched past cottages or public bars.

So here we all were. The men, women and the suffering little children slowly snaking our way towards the passport booths, heads bent, shoes shuffling, free hands and legs dragging and disinterestedly kicking along suitcases and hand luggage. Mostly, we were a polite band of troupers, bonded by the common cause of making it out of the airport in under two hours. Upon assessing the longevity of the queue, this optimistic aspiration seemed highly unlikely. I could distinctly hear the one-sided conversation going on in front of me between an elderly American woman and her husband. (Classic henpecking scenario—his best move being nodding and looking acutely bewildered). Her voice was best described as acutely grating and nasal.

I just don’t understand why you didn’t book us a room overlooking the river, Joe. I am just hankering to see the water, and I can’t see how I’m going to—now that we are staying smack-bang in the middle of the city.

Poor Joe didn’t even attempt a response. He probably realised she would not cease her tirade until he had cancelled the city room and rebooked a hotel with an exclusive river-view. The cheese grater simply would not let up and continued on relentlessly, even though he remained stubbornly reticent.

Finally, after about five minutes of the woman chastising herself with the inadequacies and impositions of city hotels, a sweaty, round-faced, bearded (also American) bear of a man in the adjoining line stopped dead in his tracks, dropped his luggage so that he could emphatically flay his fist and called over angrily to the woman, Lady, if you don’t stop whining and complaining, I’ll drag you to the river myself. I’ve heard talk there’s been a lot of cats drowned in the Liffey in very recent times.

He was the master orator, delivering the word ‘very’ with final-straw conviction.

The woman looked genuinely shocked at this blatant display of line-rage and clammed up immediately. United in the cause and finding the courage he had probably been seeking out for years, the harrowed husband finally found his voice. He was suitably accusative in his backfire. See what you’ve done again, Phyllis? Caused a disturbance again. Every country we go to, you manage to make a spectacle of yourself at the airport. Satisfied now?

Joe’s voice had been born as a faltering whisper, but by the end of his soliloquy had risen to a resounding booming gong. The final drumroll of Peer Gynt—the last piercing note by revered Irish tenor, Joseph Locke.

The big, bearded American wiped his glistening brow, nodded his agreement with Joe, and then, with laboured steps and a few backward grimaces at Phyllis, resumed his slow shuffling, convinced he had made his point. No one looked at him. No one dared. For my part, I lowered my head even further to study the shiny green linoleum and pray that I would never inadvertently cause any anxiety to the big Yank. I realised that our paths could still cross, as we had the luggage carousels and Customs with which to contend, but I need not have worried as the line had suddenly picked up momentum and the fed-up Yank was nearing the passport booths.

I wondered what his response to the compulsory question, Are you in Ireland for business or leisure? would be. I hoped it wasn’t business (specifically funny business) as I had a sixth-sense fleeting notion that he hadn’t been jesting when he’d mentioned drowning cats. (Why stop at cats?) If anything, he’d been deadly and categorically serious.

After that bit of buzz and excitement in the lines, most people had resumed their screen-feeding addiction poses. I was just about to play my part in this sheepish game when something even more bizarre took place.

I distinctly heard someone calling out my name excitedly from across at least five zigzagging lines of passengers bound for the passport booths. I thought I must have misheard and the loud, squealing female voice had been calling out someone else’s name that sounded awfully like ‘Fil.’ But there it was again, and this time there were two voices alternately calling out my name. It was definitely ‘Fil’ they were shouting for, but who would be calling me from across the queues?

I peered over as far as I could, as did all the other passengers around me, but it was impossible to get a clear view as a team of extra tall, extra tanned Africans in glossy baggy basketball shorts were blocking everyone’s vision. One of the passengers near me had a little boy of around three perched on his shoulders and from the child’s lookout vantage point, he was able to gravely inform his father that he could see two ladies jumping up and down on the spot, closer up towards the passport booths. (His position on the man’s shoulders reminded me of the little boy on the shoulders of the revolutionists in every production of Les Misérables I have ever seen).

No-one around me would have had any idea that I was the ‘Fil’ to whom the woman was calling, but I knew, and it was making me feel uncomfortable and frankly, a bit of a fraud. I should have stopped in my tracks, just as the big American had done not less than five minutes before, and sung out to all and sundry that I was ‘Fil’, but I wasn’t expecting to see any casual acquaintances in the lines to the Dublin airport passport stamping booth…or was I?

It suddenly dawned on me that my plane had been very late arriving, courtesy of two blocked flight paths at Heathrow and the confusion with emergency services at the Dublin end. The lights went on in my jet-lagged head. It must be my sisters—Mary and Anne—who should not have been in the line as they were scheduled to meet me in Dublin in the foyer of our city hotel later that evening. (I found out later that their premature arrival and my lateness had closed windows for both parties). Fate had intervened and I suddenly felt certain we were destined to meet at some point in these interminable lines. Indisputable confirmation that it was indeed Mary and Anne presented itself when the gigantic African basketballers reached a corner, and we all suddenly had a one hundred percent vision of the faraway distractors. The second I saw my family, I burst into tears of happiness and began wildly waving my arms and beckoning towards them.

You must be the fool those people were calling out to. Why do they call you a fool? Is that a nickname or a joke or something?

The meticulously dressed businessman directly to my left was curious to know if I was somehow involved in the commotion. My two-fold reaction of crying and waving must have alerted him. He was definitely amused, as he kept smiling at me. I set him straight.

No, they are not calling me a fool. They are calling me Fil—which is my name. Are you by any chance from New Zealand? The man looked pleased that I had accurately guessed his heritage and he smiled again and looked away. By now, he was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. It hadn’t really been all that hard to guess his nationality. As soon as he’d opened his mouth, I could pick it, but added to this, I was constantly being called a fool in high school by the many New Zealanders we had teaching us, and I really was no fool when it came to accents.

I was over the moon to see my sisters and I turned to the New Zealander with a smile to rival his. In five minutes, we would be reunited.

Chapter 3

Quality Airport Time

It turned out to be a little more than five minutes before I was able to embrace my own flesh and blood in the passport lines. Even then, it was quite a feat, given we were in separate snaking lines and it was impossible (and probably breaking some thirteenth-century Irish chieftain’s law) to lift the heavy line-defining ropes. I was bending over as far as I could, junior calisthenics champion that I was, but I still couldn’t clasp onto Anne, the younger and slightly shorter of my two sisters. My fingers kept slipping off her bare arms, despite her skin feeling bone dry (courtesy of the long-haul flight she had just experienced).

My kin were mirroring my elation and in all the common hype and love-fest, Anne bent too far forwards and toppled over the rope onto my side, top heavy with her luggage and bottles of duty-free perfume. (Anne has two daughters in their twenties, and the requests had been in since last year). She emerged unscathed, as all the wall-to-wall luggage and shufflers on my side of the line had cushioned her fall.

What ensued next was a collective fit of the giggles and our laughter, being infectious, set other passengers in the line off into similar uncontrolled and unexplained bouts. It was healthy bonding laughter, the perfect antidote to our tiredness and frustration at having been cooped up with strangers on long haul flights for endless hours and the snail-paced chain-gang steps we were forced to adopt. Alas, the hoard of hovering security guards clearly was not viewing our psychological states through the same lens. There is universal unwritten line etiquette associated with airport queues. Basically, it translates as ‘shut up and suffer in silence.’

Almost immediately, we were netted by three Goliath-guards, all women and all with night-shift hardened faces, clearly fed up to their back teeth with year-of-the-monkey passengers experimenting with novel forms of entertainment in the serious sombre, pride of Ireland lines. Where were the twinkling eyes, swishing plaid skirts and lilting Irish voices? The tallest of the ambushing trinity lunged forwards and plucked Anne by the back of her crumpled shirt, as if she had decided there and then to select an unlucky and unsuspecting passenger for an unscheduled midday science experiment. The white coat was missing, but that was about it.

The scowling woman was possessive of all the stereotypical features of a mad scientist on steroids. She must have managed to check herself though, because when she spoke (and after she had released her grip on Anne), it was in an authoritative, but calm, no-nonsense voice, Now that’s the end of it now, ladies. Sure, we are going to have to ask the tree of you to move up the line to the booths and wait against the long wall until your passports, visas and tickets have been examined. Sure, it’s not uncommon now for gangs to operate in trees, creating wee diversions whilst the other two slip into the country. The collective laughter around us came to an abrupt end. I looked at the three guards in amazement.

Were they for real? Did they mean us? We were women. They could not have had any inkling that we were Australian, so that fact could not have been impacting. But something was! And why was she talking about operating in trees? I looked around the stark airport surrounds, but there was not a tree to be sighted. Not even a limp, wilting pot plant, if I was honest. Mary and Anne had come from Dubai, and I remembered there to have been quite a decent collection of tall green foliage boulevards of plastic palm trees and the like, in the midst of Terminal Three, but I had always thought that to be part of the aesthetics of the place—not a handy hangout for drug drops. My instincts told me to play dumb, and seasoned traveller that I was, I knew enough to be silent and do as they had ordered. At once. My two sisters did not possess this inside knowledge on the strict protocol of customs and passport lines, and Anne had already launched her protesting tirade.

Officer, I fell over the rope, and I’m not supposed to even be in this line. This is my sister, Fil, and she came from England. Realising their blank faces were not registering the important information she was feeding them, Anne continued on in a flurry, And we came all the way from Australia.

She indicated my sister, Mary, as the missing part of the ‘we’, but the guards disdainfully ignored her platitudes. Suddenly, and with zero warning, the smallest and wiliest of the women sprang into action, ducking swiftly and silently under the thick rope to snare Mary, who had surged on ahead in her line, unaware of the serious chaos unfolding. Obviously, it wasn’t an ideal time to host a sit-in, so it was up to me to surreptitiously silence my over-vocal sister. It would mean sacrificing Mary to the grip of the wiry one as a diversion, but out of the two, Mary was tougher and older. Like a piece of well-aged sirloin, Mary could look after herself.

Anne and I were being ushered towards the booths. My younger sister, now well and truly silenced, looked petrified, but I couldn’t have cared less, as I knew this to be our golden ticket to a fast airport getaway—provided the mix up in our intentions of embracing each other and the mystery of the ‘trees’ could be resolved.

The bare wall we were placed along, and ordered to have our passports at the ready, was pale green, paint-peeled and flaky. It was all so up, close and personal that I could smell the damp musty fumes engrained in the dappled, splintery wood.

No sooner had we dumped our bags at our feet than Mary appeared on the scene, escorted by the proactive wiry woman guard.

The woman’s accent was sharp, clipped Northern Ireland. Line up with yer mates now against the wall and wait till we’re ready for yer.

I looked directly at Mary and put a finger to my lips, indicating that she was to do as the woman said and not speak. Mary, being Mary, completely ignored my lead.

Why do we have to stand here? Why are you stopping us? What are you going to do with us now?

Mary was firing her accusative questions thick and fast towards the wiry one, but the woman just shrugged and continued to dolphin graciously underneath the nearest rope. Her face had read, ‘Nothing to do with me, I’m just doing my job.’

I pulled Mary towards me and implored her not to give the officials any more grief. With Anne to my left and Mary to my right, it was a full-time job keeping my hands over their mouths. I remembered that Anne had called the first guard ‘officer’, so with a bit of luck, they would think we were all Americans—and the Irish liked the Americans. I also remembered that Anne had told the woman I had come from England. Maybe she thought I was a pommy? That would not help my cause any, as I was well aware that the Irish were not fully enamoured of the English. I loved England with all my heart but would give British pseudo-citizenship up in a heartbeat if it meant getting out of this airport sometime before next week.

Finally, the lady enclosed in the passport booth indicated for all three of us to move from the wall and approach the booth. She did so by rapping sharply on her protective glass partition (she may have been an ex-nun, so mincing was her knuckle-rapping). She then indicated for us to move forward towards her, using her rapping hand. With her right hand, she slowly held up three stubby ring-clad fingers. I wasn’t sure if she was meaning this sign to be the cue for the three of us to link arms and approach the booth, or whether she was already anticipating trouble and giving us the fingers-up victory sign, a la Richard Nixon.

For the second time in as many minutes of remembering the deep Irish/American association, I toyed with the speculation that the fat ‘fingers-up’ may not have been an entirely derogatory sign, but rather, a friendly gesture meaning, ‘welcome to our country, Yankees.’ It would be best not to spend time speculating and to act quickly. We had been against the offending, olfactory challenging wall for long enough. Although only five minutes or so had passed, it had felt as if we had been selected for the firing-squad and were sitting ducks against that greasy wall.

I sprang into action, dragging Mary and Anne by their arms over towards the booth. We are a big touchy-feely race—we Aussies—at the best of times.

Out of the fat into the frying pan—that’s where we ended up next!

In no particular order, we were grilled and given the third degree on our nationality, where we’d come from, why we had arrived in Dublin at different times and where we would be travelling to in Ireland. Having visited this fair country at least seven times before, I passed with flying colours! Unfortunately for Mary and Anne, the whole ordeal of their second voyage to Eire proved to be too much and they were both rendered speechless and shameful at having been singled out throughout the entire inquisition as potential mules. Ultimately, Mary managed to find her tongue and blurt out that the two of them had come from Dubai via Bangkok. (News to me). Unfortunately, that slither of information did nothing to support their cause. If anything, it set them back ten notches.

It is printed on your ticket here that you travelled to Dublin via Dubai. There’s no mention of Bangkok. What was your business in Bangkok?

Mary looked confused and Anne just plain terrified. All three of us realised that these officials had us pegged as drug dealers, smuggling the haul out of Bangkok and into Ireland, on the pretence of having Dubai listed as the sole transit stop.

It was not really apparent to me why Mary was telling the woman they had been in Thailand of all places, but I kept quiet, figuring that the whole tale would be duly unravelled. The priority at that moment was to convince the Irish authorities that we had no drugs, only copious amounts of duty-free perfume, which they were more than welcome to sniff, as well as mini boomerangs (which they were more than welcome to test out) and that we were not mules, but humble, hapless tourists, intent on having a leisurely three-week jaunt around captivating Ireland.

Ten minutes of scrutinising questions and a thorough searching of our hand luggage in an adjacent windowless room failed to reveal even a whiff of drugs. Reluctantly, and with ill grace that no smugglers had been exposed on this time-wasting occasion, we were gruffly told to ‘move on.’ The flip side of the bad grace coin was the added encouragement we received: Be sure now that you have a grand time in Ireland, enjoy the craic and remember to watch out for the pack of snakes that got away from St Patrick. It was a relief to know that we were all bosom buddies at this valedictory hour, as I knew it to be wise judgement to keep sweet with airport officials.

Not that my track record over the years in that department was anything to go by. For the moment though, we were free to enjoy Ireland. This time I did not have to grab Mary and Anne who, having received the official ’Ireland ’stamp and date on their passports, were loaded firearms self-discharging into the waiting crowd.

Instantly finding their feet and dragging their enormous quantity of hand luggage, my two loyal sisters galloped ahead of me towards the luggage carousels, not even once bothering to look behind to ensure I was following. Ever chilled, I was unperturbed by our lengthy detention against the wall, or their peculiar propelling motions towards the luggage carousels, and took my time catching up with them.

Since we had come into Ireland on different flights, I headed over towards the luggage carousel with the signage ‘Heathrow’ and positioned myself in a corner so that I might have a bird’s eye view of my purple suitcase the moment it poked its gigantic head out of the bowels of the basement. And it was a gigantic case I had purchased for this trip to Ireland!

Buying the case had been like purchasing a new car, so arduous was the process. It wasn’t that I had an unreasonable desire for the biggest and the best, it was more that I was preparing for battle with the luggage belts, and needed a suitcase capable of withstanding potential battering, disregard, and disdain on airport tarmacs. Ideally, it would be large enough to contain all my travelling gear, and finally, to endure being shoved into the boot of the hire car we would be picking up in a few days’ time—with strangers (my sister’s cases) whilst we meandered around Ireland in our motor.

There was a final post-condition (more like wishful thinking), and that was for the suitcase to possess tiny super slick retractable wheels, allowing it to glide along airport linoleum and hotel foyers with minimal exertion on my part. (I had briefly entertained the idea of purchasing a pair of fashion sneakers with flashing blue lights and extra tiny skates-like wheels—but my age and fitness status were both against me). I hoped I had found what I’d been searching for in the suitcase with which I was to spend my holiday in Ireland hundreds of dollars later.

Inevitably, and to spite my bird’s eye view, mine was the second last suitcase to surface. Everyone else had collected their luggage and moved on, and that left only me and a smartly dressed ‘Suit’ still waiting. I had moved from my corner perch some minutes before, and the gentleman and I were stood awkwardly in altar-pose, awaiting our truanting suitcases. He was looking quite anxious and I wanted to reassure him that suitcases always arrived—unless they had been temporarily mis-hauled onto other carousels. (Or, worst case scenario, into other countries).

I peered over to the neighbouring luggage carousel and glimpsed Mary and Anne waiting patiently for their luggage—along with about two hundred other passengers most of whom, having abandoned their queuing etiquette, were playing up big time. Suffice to say, they were definitely not behaving as sedately as Mary and Anne, and it looked to be the case of the last person standing in the luggage arena. (A few of them had ended up flat on their faces in the jostling for cases and oversized luggage items). A sale on the latest iPhones would have caused less havoc and pandemonium. I was glad it was the next carousel and not ours getting all the action.

To pass the time, I spoke reassuringly to the businessman, Shouldn’t be long now. I have my sisters over in that crowd at the next carousel. They’re waiting for their luggage too. Are you here alone? Even as I blurted out the words, I could imagine Mary and Anne peering over towards me, babbling to a stranger at the luggage carousel, and the bets they would be placing on the likelihood of my scoring a lift with him into Dublin city, or even more practical for our purposes, a rundown on the best places to eat and visit whilst in the city. We had our list of to DO’s in Dublin, but you couldn’t beat hearing it from the horse’s mouth.

Yah! Ich bin!

They need not have bothered with the bets, and I need not have bothered chatting to the guy, as even pigeon English would have presented a challenge for him. When his suitcase finally pushed through the rubber flaps—it was a small brown overnight bag—hardly indicative of either wealth or a lengthy sojourn in Ireland. On the upside, he did beam at me and he had displayed patience and self-control whilst we’d been waiting.

Over at the next carousel, Mary and Anne were waving at me to join them, so I promptly took leave of the German businessman and propelled my suitcase forwards on its shiny new flashing wheels. It was fast and sleek and light as a feather, despite the thirty-three kilos of clothes and numerous tiny boomerangs it contained. I had decided on miniature wooden boomerangs, hand-painted in Australian green and gold on one side, and earthy aboriginal colours on the flip side as a token gift to random people I hoped to meet in Ireland—as a memento from Australia.

On my last trip to England, I had distributed tiny koalas to strangers with whom I’d struck up conversations, or good Samaritans who had kindly helped me out of sticky situations. It was always a good feeling to be able to hand out a token gift reflective of Australian culture, and I had thought long and hard about what to bring to Ireland. Browsing in a craft shop a few months before the big trip, I spotted the tiny plywood boomerangs in packets of fifty. In a snap decision, I purchased two bags of the tiny wooden boomers and stashed them away in a snap-lock plastic bag for future hand painting. I felt confident that the finished products would be of the highest quality, as my qualifications in the art of replicating authentic Australian aboriginal designs were high.

My craft had been gleaned from the master—or the mistress as was the case—when I gave my all in a one day ‘Dot Painting Workshop’ in Central Australia (Uluru) some years ago. The workshop was held at the cultural centre nestled at the foot of the giant red rock itself, and according to the brochure, participants were promised a day of fun and frivolity whilst learning how to create one’s own dot painting to take home as a memento. In retrospect, I enjoyed the experience, but it was seething hot 40 degrees, so long a day, and so boring just dabbing a cotton wool stick with red, brown and yellow paint and applying dots to a slither of canvas the size of my palm, that I’d had enough after an hour. To add salt to the wound, the expectation had been to squat on the scorching red sand for the better part of the day. (Squatting had never been my forte in school, and there had been no improvement in my squatting prowess over the last forty years).

I tried to convince the squatting aboriginal woman of ample jet-black flesh encased in voluminous metres of yellow and red material demonstrating the technique that I was already a proficient dotter; in fact, I was a whiz at dotting. Tauntingly, Aunty Pearl of the gleaming white teeth and colourful costume was never going to be handing out the early passes, and all four sizzling, galvanised, ten-foot-high iron doors were double locked. So, I stayed, dabbed and dotted, guzzled water and nibbled on bush tucker berries until merciful nightfall, when we were finally released into the pitch desert starry-skied landscape. Quite an experience, and one that left me with an appreciative life-long cultural respect for dot paintings. The most important realisation for me that day was the tremendous integrity of the indigenous Australian aboriginal peoples and their fierce adherence to cultural preservation in the most ethical ways possible.

I knew this translated as no replicating dot paintings, no climbing the Rock and definitely no venturing onto tribal land. I could cope