Boats moored in Shute Harbor, near Airlie Beach, northern Queensland. Photo by Kevin S. Giles.

By Kevin S. Giles

Morning comes early in Australia. We awake to the laughing calls of kookaburras from old gum trees. Ocean surf crashes two blocks away. It’s short of 6 a.m. but people already walk the beaches.

We’re staying in a third-floor flat on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. The view through the open windows takes us far to sea. A container ship, loaded high, navigates the channel through Moreton Bay. The glittering Pacific Ocean freshens vast stretches of white sand with long brushes of tide. We see much of the Australia we remember from when we lived there all those years ago. Open-air shops sell the customary staple, fish and chips, and cold XXXX beer with the familiar gold label. Galleries burst with paintings of aboriginal art and photographs of the Outback’s rusty colors. Tanned people of all ages wear floppy hats to keep the subtropical sun off their faces. Babes in G-string bikinis preen under palm trees. Fleets of sailboats bob in aqua harbors. Classic Queensland homes on stilts beckon from green carpets of vegetation. Rain forests ripple with prehistoric natural diversity. Everywhere we hear, “G’day, mate,” the national greeting. And in these trying times of coronavirus come reassurances of, “She’ll be right, mate. No worries.”

Fish of all sizes and descriptions inhabit the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Photo by Becky Giles.

We Yanks admire the Australian national spirit. Bush fires, cruel as they were, couldn’t burn away the country’s resolve. Neither could years of drought. Sudden drenching rain brought renewal to a brown lifeless landscape. The Great Barrier Reef remains (for now) alive with aquatic life, although it’s dying because of a warming Coral Sea. Australia is a land of extremes, an ocean-isolated continent often considered the ground zero of climate change. As we visited the state of Queensland, north of the major fire damage, we saw Australia much as it should be – a calm place momentarily relieved from whip-lashs of flood and drought and distanced from the rampaging coronavirus.

I’m back in the United States as I write this. I struggle from jet lag, from disappointment that our visit to Down Under ended abruptly, from shock at seeing the country we consider our second home reeling from yet another tragedy. It’s presumptuous and petty for me to dwell on the ruin the coronavirus crisis wrought on an adventure we had planned for a year. Our truncated travel, our loss of thousands of dollars invested in sightseeing, hardly compares with loss of life. It’s with suffering families that our thoughts lie most.

Kevin S. Giles wrote ‘Summer of the Black Chevy,’ a novel, which tells the story of teenagers finding their way in life.

We embarked for Australia, via Honolulu, on the last day in February. The coronavirus, although worrisome, seemed far away. We spent most of the first week in a holiday flat on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane, near the beach. Each morning, a television commercial featuring ordinary Australians around the country implored residents to visit the natural features of their own country. Chinese tourism, because of coronavirus, had dried up. American tourists came in droves. As coronavirus surged, the commercial faded from the airwaves.

Our longtime Aussie friends, Greg and Karen, ask us how their country has changed since we lived there 45 years ago. Parts of what we see closely resemble the United States. New big freeways and bridges, familiar big box retailers, more hustle and bustle. Coastal development overwhelmed the quaint seaside village of Peregian Beach where we once spent Christmas overlooking the dunes, where crashing surf lulled us to sleep. We wonder if that house survived the stampede of rich investors.

An aboriginal boy plays a didgeridoo, an ancient wind instrument invented by his ancestors, in Kuranda, a village in northern Queensland. Photo by Kevin Giles

All those years ago when we lived there, Australia seemed as far away from our America as anyplace on the globe. We Yanks were young then, working in Brisbane and sweltering through humid summers in a small unadorned flat with a rented TV and no air conditioning and no screens, surrendered to the great distance that kept us from our American family and friends for 18 months. Mobile phones and personal computers didn’t exist. We had no email, no texts, no chats. We had no landline as the waiting time for installation extended many months. From the red phone box down the street, after making reservations for an operator, we placed rare calls to our parents. Conversations lasted until we ran out of coins, usually in minutes. Our first daughter was born there. We named her Heather Sunshine to commemorate her birth in Queensland, the “Sunshine State” of Australia. Recently, when Heather wrote her full name at a government office, she was asked if her parents were hippies. I guess we were.

Now it’s March 2020. We visit Australia for only the second time since we lived there. Jobs and family life kept us away for so long. Greg and Karen meticulously mapped out a six-week itinerary that would include a tour of Tasmania, Australia’s island state. Suddenly, a few days after we arrive, the world changes. Australian tourism advertisements fade away while travel restrictions grow. We feel anxious. We’re 8,600 miles from home.

On those mornings when the kookaburras sing, when the surf rolls up just as it’s done for a million years, something ominous invades our Down Under adventure. Morning news reports bring warnings of a worsening coronavirus scare. The World Health Organization names it a pandemic. We read the metro papers, groan over the world reports, feel the noose tightening on our excursion. Restrictions begin. Overseas airlines cut flights with dizzying speed. We forego traveling to Tasmania. Our attention turns to the revelation that all overseas flights will end in a matter of days. They might not resume, the prime minister intones, for six months to a year. He announces border closures. Halfway through our six-week adventure, the end comes.

Our Australian friends, Karen and Greg and Lyn and Roy, implore us to catch one of the final flights home. (Becky taught in the primary grades with Karen and Lyn when we lived in Australia.) Customer service phones at Qantas Airlines warn of a five-hour wait, then eight. Travelocity, the online travel service where we booked our initial flights, won’t answer the phone. We try websites but they balk and freeze. The US Embassy in Canberra reportedly can’t keep up with calls from American tourists seeking help. We spend hours on the phone and computer hoping someone will answer, something will work, somebody will care.

Finally, Lyn drives us to Brisbane International Airport. Among the banks of dark lanes and echoing shiny floors, we find a Qantas agent at a sales desk. She repairs our itinerary, she even smiles, even as the co-worker next to her frowns in frustration as she shuffles at least 50 paper tickets like puzzle pieces trying to find new flights for desperate passengers. Qantas, we read, had cut 90 percent of its international flights by then. The airline also furloughed tens of thousands of workers.

The next day, after sad partings, we board a plane from Brisbane to Sydney. From Sydney we fly six miles above the ocean on a 15-hour journey to San Francisco. Yanks like us fill the plane. Most of them, we surmise, cut vacations short just as we did. At San Francisco, a ticket agent tells us United Airlines canceled our direct flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Instead we’re routed through Denver. Our final leg was the least inhabited. Only about 25 of us flew to Minnesota on a plane built for at least 100 more. We arrive home after traveling 24 hours and passing the International Date Line and 16 time zones.

Along the way, we pulled out sanitizing wipes to cleanse tray tables, arm and head rests and seat belts. Hand washing became an hourly ritual. Airport concourses felt like tombs. Many people wore masks. Police rode bicycles through the empty expanses.

As I write this, Becky and I passed the first half of our 14-day quarantine back home without any coronavirus symptoms. Maybe the caution we took will save us. Maybe it’s too early to tell.

On reflection, it’s too easy to dwell on the stress and worry that dominated the final days of our stay in Australia. We cannot let this haunting intrusion sour our view of what we value most about our visit. Better to remember the good things, right? Spending time with old friends we consider family. Seeing the Great Barrier Reef from the air and underwater. Riding a rambling historic train to the mountain village of Kuranda where an aboriginal boy blew on the didgeridoo to greet us. Seeing enough sugar cane to feed the world. Marveling how nature’s paintbrush creates a canvas of purples and reds and yellows, how the green splash of vegetation calms the soul, how the long reaches of sparkling water beckon the mind to wander, how true friendships endure decades no matter distance and circumstance.

Even in these harsh times, the best of Australia crowds our memories.

Becky (middle) taught in Australia with Karen (right) and Lyn. They’ve been friends ever since. Photo by Kevin Giles

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.