Jans thoughts on arriving in Oz

Well I had started to feel as if we were 'going home' as soon as we crossed the equator into the Southern hemisphere!

Our passage from Vanuatu to Townsville was, to say the least, trying. The wind was either not there at all, or howling from the wrong direction. I think we motored more on this passage than any other to be honest. The sea was larger than we expected too, nothing we couldn't handle though.

About 170 miles outside Townsville, we were overflown by a border patrol plane who asked us a lot of questions, all of which, of course, they already knew the answers to as we had provided all of our details to the authorities a good 96 hours before our ETA.

Not that we minded at all – this was the first 'official' Aussie voice we'd heard, and when he signed off by saying 'Welcome back to Australia' I'm afraid I completely lost it and burst into tears – yeah, I know, it was a girly thing to do but I had no control and just gave up all resistance (a frankly scary trend, as time would prove, but you'll read about that later).

So, buoyed by our first contact with home we carried on through the day and into the night, transiting through Palm Passage and into the inner Barrier Reef, the passage is a shipping channel dredged to 60 meters, so imagine my surprise when I saw the depth meter go from 65 to 58 to 25 to 17 to 10 then 5 then 1.4 meters, then back again in a similar way up to 65 – this happened three times in all and knowing we were surrounded by nasty sharp pointy coral reef this little black duck wasn't happy..............however, nothing seemed to hit us and the rest of the passage was uneventful.

First glimpse of Magnetic Island and Townsville was around dawn, a truly magnificent sight after so long away from this amazing sunburnt country of ours. As we headed for the marina, we contacted the harbourmaster who advised us what was going on traffic wise and suggested which approach to use, then in a beautiful broad aussie accent said 'welcome home guys' and I think it's fair to say my eyes then stayed wet for about the next 12 hours.

We pulled alongside the marina fuel jetty to be greeted by the marina manager who welcomed us; we couldn't get off the boat as we had to be cleared by immigration, quarantine and customs, who were all expected after lunch. I was so emotional I could barely speak, and I think I may have hugged the marina manager.

The authorities duly arrived. I have to say at this point that we both spent a great deal of time defending the Australian policy on what you can and cannot bring into Australia foodwise to the many foreign yachties we encountered – a lot of people are terrified by what they believe will happen when they get here, and some even refuse to visit rather than sacrifice some of their food.

The crew that boarded Fully Involved were absolutely brilliant, I can't praise them enough for the way they processed us, I voluntarily handed over any dairy we had left from provisions and happily let them go through our fridge. All they were interested in was dairy and meat – so yes, we kept all of our dry, tinned and packaged good – including all of our herbs and spices. This is my country too and I am happy to do my part in keeping it disease free. I also managed not to hug the customs man, although I was still misty eyed and a bit wobbly on my feet (ok, I MAY have had a celebratory gin and tonic to mark our arrival).

After describing the events coming through Palm Passage to a few local people, the concensus was that a whale passed under us.......

So, there you have it as promised – a small insight into how arriving home in Australia felt to me. I have yet to work out if I keep crying because I'm glad to be home, or because the adventure is almost over.  All I can say in closing is if anyone reading this plans on meeting us as we sail into Hillarys Yacht Club you'd better bring tissues for me.