Traveling with Kinetosis

Professor Tillman was animatedly explaining the worst offenses elderly drivers obliviously commit when they are unfortunately too old to drive but believe they still can. Stories such as, dragging a body they have hit all the way home only to notice as they slowly step out of the driver’s seat. Given my already ingrained fear of driving, I tried to block this visceral image from my mind. I was always good at daydreaming, so I started fantasizing about exotic warmer climates with amazing creatures I had only seen on TV or in pictures. And that’s when it hit me – Australia! I had to go, if not now, when? I couldn’t wait until I was 60, especially since I was sitting in an old lecture hall listening to the psychology of aging and all the horrible things it seemed I had to look forward to as I got older.  I leaned over to my best friend, whom I had met six months ago on our very first class of invertebrate zoology. Since then, we had spent nearly every waking minute together. “Mel, I’m going to go to Australia”, I whispered and leaned back in my seat. I thought, oh dear now I really have to do it!  I’m not the kind of person who will back out of their word. Once I say I will do something, then I will, which is partly why I felt compelled to utter those words to Melissa. I had to say it and now I had to make it come true. 

Six months later, after many late hours of waitressing at the local pub, I had my plane ticket in hand, kissed my ‘on again-off again’ boyfriend of four years goodbye (this time for good) and boarded the plane. Now I have to say that I have a fear during flying – not of flying itself though, I actually love the time in flight. It feels like time doesn’t exist anymore, like life is on pause. I love looking out over the clouds and feeling the humming of the engine as I dream about all the amazing things that can happen in life. So no, my fear is not of flying itself, but of vomiting. Unfortunately for my love of travel, I tend to get quite motion sick. I’m sure I must seem like a crazy nervous flyer to the poor person seated next to me: there I am, taking my anti-nausea pills and fixatedly staring out the window at the horizon (I need a point of reference for my sensitive inner ears in case of turbulence), rebuking any initiation of conversation that may pull my focus away from the window. But I was determined not to let that stop me from seeing the world. And so, armed with my anti-nausea pills, pressure point wrist bands and close at hand barf-bag I was ready!   

Stepping off the plane, I could immediately feel the moisture in the air and the smell of a new country. Sam, a friend of Mel’s, met me at the airport and we navigated the throngs of people to the train and back to his place so I could put my bag down and take a quick refreshing shower. After so many hours on a plane the shower felt unbelievably reinvigorating. Then began the whirlwind of sight-seeing: photos outside the architecturally astounding Opera House, drinks at a café at “the rocks” and wandering the Circular Quay, then up the gondola to the Taronga Zoo! I had to contain myself from running around squealing like a little child, because I was so excited to see the sleepy koalas hanging from eucalyptus branches, and that fantastic jigsaw creature – the platypus – swimming around in the water. We walked all over that first day, and soon the blisters on my feet were beginning to outnumber the band-aids I had in my purse. So, we caught the train home, then I pumped up the air-mattress and curled up in the living room of Sam’s flat, falling asleep for the first time in “Oz”.

The next morning, we had coffee and bacon sitting on milk crates in the kitchen. Bill, Christian and Sam had just recently moved in together and started dentistry school in Sydney. It was very kind of them to let me crash on their floor for a week or so and let me get my feet wet and my bearing straight in this new land.  Christian gave me his copy of “A Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson and I spent the next few days reading the travel writer’s adventures in Australia and his research on all the insanely deadly creatures that inhabit this land. Christian and I walked to a nearby park chatting about the book and what I hoped to do while I was there. The wind was blowing quietly and all of a sudden there were thousands of flying insects all around – they looked like fireflies to me but without any glow. We walked through the swarm and amazingly enough, every single insect flew around us and managed not to touch us at all in their flight path. They just danced around us as we walked through. 

As we headed home, we passed the neighbor’s and they invited us to dinner. We ate a delicious meal out on their patio under strings of light and talked of travel and new experiences. They had traveled extensively, and their house was filled with trinkets from all over the world. I was enthralled and secretly hoped that I would one day have a house filled with mementos and memories from adventures from around the globe. After dinner we drank wine and VB’s in lawn chairs, listening to music with the Southern Cross overhead. I saw a bat fly over and I felt like this was where I was supposed to be in that moment. 

Within a week of being in Australia, I was in the sky again. All I could hear was the whirr of the airplane then, “You’re next, come on!” We scooted our bodies forward to the open door of the plane and I was told not to look down, so I craned my neck up and closed my eyes for a second and then we were falling… tumbling out into the air. The force of the winds blowing up as we fell down was immense – intense enough to ripple our skin and flare our nostrils – which we laughed at watching the video after. Yet at the time it just felt amazing (for lack of a better word). We somersaulted out of the plane and then turned 360 degrees while free falling… I loved it. Then before I knew it, the parachute had been deployed and in one quick whoosh we were sitting and floating down instead of falling. Now as we pitched and yawned with the winds, this is when my motion sickness began to kick in once again (darn you inner ears)! I could see the earth coming closer and make out the fields of sugarcane drawing nearer and all I could think was ‘don’t throw up, hurry up and get down and don’t throw up’!  We made it to the ground and I barely made it back to the building before I had to run to the bathroom. I spent the rest of the day in bed with my sick bucket in our hostel, but it was worth it for those first few seconds of free falling and I could now check skydiving off my bucket list!

The following day we had to wake up at 3am for our next adventure… we painfully peeled ourselves out of bed when it was still dark and drove to the open fields. All we could make out was the rhythmic blasts of fire as they pumped up the hot-air balloons. Soon enough we were lifting off the ground and gently gliding above the fields as the sun was rising. It was stunning to look down and see kangaroos hopping below us. But I must say if I were to do it again, I would recommend hot air balloons before skydiving – I was laughing to myself thinking how tame this felt in comparison. Although I suppose there’s still a chance to fall from the sky, and this time we didn’t have parachutes… 

My next adventure went from sky to sea. Stepping off the boat, flippers first, the warm water enveloped me with a whoosh as I took my first few breaths of air under water. The scuba instructor told us to just follow his flippers on this first dive, and as usual I followed instructions a little too well. When we came up for air, everyone was sitting around watching the video they took of us under water, which showed so many fish and beautiful underwater landscapes that I did not see at all since I was watching the instructor’s flippers so intently! Ok, first scuba dive was a bit of a fail, so I signed up for a week-long course to learn how to scuba dive for real. After a few days in the classroom and practicing in a pool we set out on the Great Barrier Reef for 3 days. The first day they handed out anti-nausea pills to everyone getting on board, and I’m thinking oh my, what have I signed up for! And I’m not going to lie: the first day was not great with motion sickness but I learned that I felt better under the water than on the boat. Every time we had the chance to dive – morning, noon and night – I was in the water. And we saw the cornucopia of coral colors with the multitude of fish flashing around, and a white-tipped reef shark. During the night dives we even saw a turtle and an eel! It was phenomenal to be immersed in another world, all the while listening to my ‘Darth Vader’ sounds from the respirator and feeling the sense of buoyancy and calm from the water. One of the course instructors reminded me of a friend from high school and we ended up teasing each other like old friends throughout the week. 

On the last morning I woke up and got ready for our first dive of the day – getting my wet suit, flippers, tank and gear all ready but when I pulled my goggles on, they felt a bit slippery. I was focused on getting into the water, so I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until I put the respirator in my mouth that I started gagging – the bitter, salty taste of vegemite assaulted my taste buds! As I spat it out and pulled off my eye mask, the instructor took a photo, laughing and all pleased with himself – the vegemite was rimmed all over my googles and now my raccoon-like face as well! After I cleaned up and got in the water, I spent most of that dive scheming how to get the prankster back. Pretend I’m drowning might be going too far, sure, but maybe vegemite under his pillow…?!

Back on dry land, we pulled up in a cloud of red dust, climbed up to the lookout and were all at a loss for words. The sky was on fire. The deep glowing red calmed to a cotton candy pink as the sun made its debut. The tour group I joined was spending the day at Uluru. After the blaze of a sunrise, we walked to the Cultural Centre to learn more about the history associated with this red rock. We got a tour around the base of the rock with a local Aboriginal tour guide and we all decided not to join other tourists climbing the sacred mountain. We did not want to be disrespectful in the land we were visiting, so we enjoyed the weather-sculpted ridges of the great rock from ground level.  We felt the beauty of the changing colors on the rock with the slow rise of the sun, then the harsh but equally beautiful contrast of colors with the blue sky against red rock during the heat of the day. 

In the afternoon we walked around Kata Tjuta, feeling so tiny looking up from the valleys into the vast spherical rock cliffs on either side of us, while the wind filtered through the narrow pathways teasing us with a cool breeze in the rising temperatures. That night we gathered around the firepit and shared life stories. Slowly everyone drifted to bed – swags under the stars. I climbed into my swag with multiple layers of clothes since it can get quite cold at night, zipped the sleeping bag up all around me, all the while thinking back to Bill Bryson’s book and hoping that no scorpions, snakes or other critters decided to bunk in with me that night! I stared up at the pinprick of stars dotting the night sky with their ancient stardust light, picking out the Southern Cross and other constellations that were new at first, but now had become familiar to me. 

While listening to the insects and night-time sounds all around me, I felt so content and lucky to be on such an adventure. The stars shone down on me from their vantage points and then suddenly they started to spin… it took me a moment to realize someone had grabbed my swag and was spinning me around on the ground! ’Stop!’ I shout, ‘my motion sickness!’ We all had a good laugh after that. Once I and the stars were stationary again, I reflected that soon I would be back in the lecture hall with Mel to finish my degree and laying there in the red dusty sand I was so thankful for the memorable experiences I’d bring home with me. And before I fell asleep, I said a quiet thank you for anti-nausea medication and made a mental note to remember to pick up more pills on my way to the airport to help me survive my return flight home. 

by Natasha Lloyd

Featured photo by Jessica Papini.
Supportive comments are welcomed.

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