The Promised Land!

“If Australia hadn’t existed we’d have had to invent it...the need to believe in a heaven on earth, somewhere you can put your past behind you and start again. Just imagine the convicts coming over those mountains with their tickets of leave and seeing this...the promised land!”

As Inspector Morse once remarked on his little visit to Australia in the aptly entitled episode, Promised Land. Incidentally, sorry if I’ve misquoted him, any Inspector Morse purists out there, that was just from my hazy old memory after totally wearing out my video of that particular one!

I did try to watch it again recently in preparation for this, but my video made that hideous squeaky chewing noise when you know all’s not well! I would have said it spat it back out at me, but nearer the mark would be it regurgitated it after I spent half an hour wrestling with it and very technically trying to prise it out with a couple of butter knives without completely writing off my machine as well as my tape and channelling Alison Page and electrocuting myself into the bargain!

Anyway, there is a point to this, I promise! For just like Inspector Morse in that particular episode, I too am in ‘the promised land’ and I’m as excited as a very excitable person who has an especially exciting reason to feel excited, because I’m here for the celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the first transmission of Prisoner! You know you’ve got it bad when you’ll travel 10,000 miles or whatever it is just for that!

It feels like it’s been ever such a long time coming, because despite being a fan of the show for donkey’s years, I’ve always missed out on these big occasions that have come and gone before, either through being too poor and/or too much of a jumbly muddle! Never mind, when I was growing up my Mum always told me that if you wish long enough and hard enough for something it’ll happen, and it seems she was right because here I am in sunny Melbourne awaiting the commencement of the first big extravaganza in just a few short hours from now! It’s almost beyond excitingness!

I’ve only been a couple of days in the country, but first up I thought I’d have a couple of days in Sydney first to do some non Prisoner things while I was recovering from my flight! Yes, amazing as it seems even to me at times, there’s a whole wide world of fabulous things to be doing and adventures to be having even outside of Prisoner!

Other than feeling I was on some kind of SAS sleep deprivation endurance test as I grappled with my body clock being totally upside down, everything’s gone smoothly so far, even my transit through Bangkok Airport which I always find scary biscuits, envisaging some kind of ghastly Bangkok Hilton-esque worst case scenario! Speaking of which, I’d highly recommend Bangkok Hilton (the mini series that is, not the prison!) for the overall flair of the piece (they sure didn’t think less was more with their TV budgets back in those days!) and also the chance to see a couple of excellent Prisoner-related cameos by Norman Kaye (Mum’s son-in-law during the early days of the series, and another really brilliant character actor in everything I’ve seen him in – alongside Sheila Florance, he was absolutely outstanding in A Woman’s Tale, I thought) and Gerda Nicolson, really showing her versatility in playing a very different character to good old Ann Reynolds.

Speaking of scary biscuits, I’ve generally found it to be quite scary biscuits arriving in Australia too with all their intense Customs, immigration and quarantine people so on the ball! It was quite funny the first time I came over, because I had quite a bizarre experience that could only really happen to me! It was all very adventurous, because I was 21, I’d never even been up in a plane before or anywhere more exotic and faraway than Canvey Island in Essex! Not one for half measures, I thought I’d head off to Australia all on my ownio to have lots of exciting escapades and experience all the places that I’d always dreamt off, lucky Lily that I’ve been at times!

Anyway, I got myself into a right old Lily-style fluster when I first arrived at Sydney Airport, all due to a bizarre sequence of events which unfolded when, being the thrifty Scot that I am, I thought I’d save my complimentary cracker and cheese that I got on the plane for a tasty bite once I was settled into my hotel! You know there’s no truth whatsoever in the rumour that the Grand Canyon in America came about when a Scot dropped a farthing down a rabbit hole and started digging for it!

Anyway, of course when I touched down at Sydney, with the big massive Scary Mary signs up all over the place screaming in big bold letters, “All you tight-fisted Scots out there, don’t even think about trying to smuggle crackers and cheese into this country because you’re too stingy to buy your own supper, because it’s against quarantine regulations! Yes that’s you we’re talking about Lily! Consider yourself verbally slapped!”

Uh-oh! So, imagining that I was about to find myself packed off to the real Wentworth for such a flagrant abuse of Australian Customs regulations, I broke into a major sweat and started frantically scrabbling into my knapsack for the offending tasty treat, found the little packet of cheese and the cracker, but the tiny pat of butter was nowhere to be found! *Gasp!* Talk about a gateslam moment!

With the sniffer dogs all over me at the baggage carousel, I went a deeper and deeper shade of purple as the Customs man pulled me to the side and got me to open up my suitcase and went over it all with a microscope! Embarassingness to find yourself having a total stranger rifling through your polka dot undies! Anyway, he finally reached my knapsack and decanted the entire contents of that, only to find, completely and utterly bizarrely, the notorious butter pat had secreted itself into my toiletry bag!!!

Honestly, that’s not a euphemism, it really was butter, and high grade butter at that, Your Honour! Oh my word, I didn’t know where to look or what to stay, mumbling between my blushes that I’d really no idea how it got there! Luckily the kind Customs man took pity on the poor imbecile who just tried to smuggle butter into his country in a toiletry bag and let me off with a gentle warning about the error of my ways to buy my own supper next time after I was safely in the country! Let me tell you, I’ve never done that again and always have terrible guilty flashbacks every time I go through Customs in Oz! I always think because I look so guilty they’ll think I am and it’ll happen all over again!

Luckily this time around I had no such bizarre drama and I was waved through without any problems, which was just as well because they had big signs up warning you that you could be filmed for Channel Seven’s Border Security programme (now that’s the kind of TV star I really don’t want to be!!!). What a relief I wasn’t stopped, because I’d have some explaining to do about my tragic Prisoner obsession with my bag crammed full of Prisoner bits and bobs for people to sign!!!

I’m sure it helped the fact that for my trip this time, I’d treated myself to a nice shiny new suitcase, and it’s a fabulously camp as a Christmassy cat bright pink one with lovely butterflies all over it! I guess they figured that no self respecting smuggler would think of being as ostentatious as that! I must say though, as larey as it is, I’ve no problems spotting that baby on the baggage carousel!

So all was well that ended well, and it was worth every minute of the journey and the traverse through the scary bureaucracies of faraway lands for that feeling you get when your plane’s tyres kiss the runway as you finally come into land in Australia after 20-odd hours up in the sky, and you feel like joining those tyres and getting down and kissing the tarmac yourself. There really is no other feeling like it in the world!

I was treated to quite a sight as we flew in over Sydney actually, as through the early morning mists a big superliner, the Queen Victoria, was just coming into berth in Circular Quay. It really was quite a treat, although I was less impressed when I checked into my hotel which was just across the way from the Quayside and found it was totally blocking my view of the harbour! Much like her namesake, we were not amused!

That somehow reminds me of a funny story of something that happened one time the Queen attended a civic function in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Making small talk with the dignitaries over a nice cup of tea (the Queen must have some kind of phD in that!), she asked one of them, "And would you like cake or meringue?" to which the councillor replied, "No yer not wrang Yer Majesty, I'd love a bit of cake!"

Anyway, to add insult to injury, rather rudely I thought, the Queen Victoria left without me the very next day though without as much as a by your leave (how very dare it?!), leaving me quite pleased though to have my glorious view of the sparkly wonders of the shimmering vista before me, but then wouldn’t you Adam and Eve it if another great hulking big ship decided to take its place that evening?! Well really!

I must admit, I do love big boats though, and I was so taken with the Queen Victoria in particular (fancy moving the EastEnders pub to the middle of Sydney harbour though?! No sign of Peggy Mitchell though, I have to report!) that I really wanted to reach out and clap it, only I’d have fallen into the water, and/or been arrested as a potential terrorist for such lunatic behaviour!

So anyway, as I was saying, here I am in Melbourne now and all of a quiver at the excitements that await me with all these Prisoner celebrations! I can’t even begin to imagine what it’ll be like to see the jolly old Wentworth and all those familiar faces from the show over the next couple of days. I’m sure it’ll be rather like an especially bizarre and trippy dream! I’ve got my ticket for the big bash today safe in my hot little hand, but if there is a problem with it, I guess I can always blog my way in! Bwahahaha!

Oh well, I’ll report back again to share some more of my mad old adventures with you as soon as I can! Bye for now then!