Tullamarine





Sitting in Tullamarine airport at the departure lounge I cast my eyes over the mixture of passengers, young and old, couples and families, all of them have their own reasons, their own story on why they are boarding this Boeing 787 bound for Phuket via Singapore. Before I seek a publisher for the book, I have to actually finish it, for it is incomplete.
What happens to me on this trip will dictate what I write and how the book ends, if at all. It is an unknown factor just like the journey itself. I had left Thailand and my Thai girlfriend in February of this year with a pile of notes, photos and a stomach illness that was causing me a lot of distress. On arriving back in Tasmania I immediately tried to book in to see my doctor. He was away and wouldn’t be back for a week. I reluctantly took the late appointment. It’s not much fun living on a basic diet of eggs and bananas.
When I was finally able to see my doctor and explained the symptoms, he immediately diagnosed that my e coli was out of wack and told me to take a course of probiotics, which included Yakult and probiotic yoghurt. The improvement was insignificant. I was beginning to worry about my return trip to Thailand, if I couldn’t make a faster improvement I might have to cancel. There is nothing worse than being on a holiday and being sick, and as I was going for three months I had to be right. Switching to some probiotic tablets about a week out I began to make a rapid improvement. Thank goodness, although I would still have to take it easy with my diet.
The call comes for us to board. I rise, lift my carry bag onto my shoulder and take those first tentative steps into a living odyssey.













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