Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Leaving Australia Twice in Thirty Minutes

“Ma’am, can you please come over here.”

In the split second it takes to hear those words and process their implication, I mentally kick myself. Leading up to my first international flight in more than two years, I’ve been obsessed with the essentials of Covid-era travel: possession of international vaccination certificate, and proof of Covid insurance and in-bound RAT booking for Fiji, where half of my stay will be allocated to diving. I kick myself because I’ve forgotten to put the tools for my underwater camera housing in checked luggage.

The speaker has brown eyes, straight shoulder-length locks and insufficient facial hair to warrant pruning. He motions for me to move to a stainless-steel bench where my camera bag has assumed the status of a bomb about to explode.

I instinctively reach down to unzip the pocket where the tools are.

“Ma’am, you are not allowed to touch the bag.”

What? Does this highschooler reckon I am going to poke him with an Allen key or take a shifting spanner to his head? I, who am old enough to be his grandmother?

“They’re in there.” I point to the offending pocket.

He removes a red-and-white plastic Grace Brothers bag, a leftover from the last millennium. In my eagerness to demonstrate the harmlessness of its contents, my hand involuntarily hovers over the opening.

“Ma-am, please do not touch that.”

I look at my watch: it is almost three hours until my flight departs. “All right, so what are my options?”

This is not my first experience of having been stopped at the bag check station. Some years ago I was pulled up for having a gun in my carry on. I’d opened it to reveal a torch with a pistol grip. “See?” I’d said, “it’s a torch.” I’d flipped the lid of the battery case to make sure they understood. No, I was told, the scanner read my torch as being a gun and therefore it had to go into checked luggage. There was silence on the matter of a permit for my “firearm’. I remember decanting the remaining items and wearing them on each arm as I boarded the plane. But, despite the inconvenience, the torch ended up on the same flight.

“Well,” Junior says, his face as expressive as a stone pillar, “we can hold these items for you until your return. Or we can dispose of them.”

My lips part in disbelief. Has he any idea that a camera housing without tools is about as useful as a bag scanner during a power outage?

“Sorry, that’s not going to happen,” I say, looking him square in the eye. No-one, not even someone too young to shave, is going to ruin my trip. “How about I go back to the check-in counter with the tools and ask to have them put in checked luggage?”

“Uh, let me see.” I imagine he’s mentally running through the chapter in the baggage-screening training manual on obstreperous travellers.

The kid walks across to a woman whose gaze is fixed on items passing through the screening device. As he delivers my request her brows start to knit, Frida-Kahlo style, across her forehead. She looks in my direction, eyes narrowing. The Cruella de Vil of baggage screening is limbering up to use her favourite negative.

I start contemplating how I may go about replacing the tools when I get to Fiji.

After what seems like forever but is probably no more than half a minute, the youth returns to the bench.

“Ma’am, it’s okay for you to put these items in checked luggage.”

“Great!” It’s that easy, I think, as I begin to retrace my steps.

“Um, Ma’am, you need to talk to Border Force over there,” he gestures to a bank of kiosks, “before you can go back to the departure hall.”

Five minutes ago I passed through one of those SmartGates that use facial recognition and ePassport technology to check a person’s identity. Although I am still in the airport building, technically I’ve left Australia. To place my camera bag in checked luggage, I must re-enter the country. For that, I need the co-operation of the arm of government that oversees the movement of international travellers.

Border Force…two words that strike terror in a citizen’s heart. These are the people who intercept asylum seekers arriving by sea and blow up their boats. They can force travellers to hand over their phones and pass codes. Their activities are sufficiently entertaining to have sustained a TV series over 15 seasons.

I walk to a kiosk occupied by a smiling male officer, explain my situation and wait for him to wave me through.

“That fellow over there is who you need to speak to,” my congenial interlocutor says, indicating a tall man with thinning hair and half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. The man, about 20 metres away, is engaged in conversation with someone – a passenger who has, perhaps, secreted a flick-knife in their alimentary canal? – and is not smiling.

I muster my most apologetic face and mosey on over.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he says, the corners of his mouth resisting any upward movement. I study the stream of departing passengers, wondering what percentage – either unknowingly or otherwise – is routinely snagged at the scanner. How many have handed over or thrown away precious belongings for the sake of boarding their flight?

“Okay, what is it you want?”

“I need to get into the departure hall,” I say, eyes swivelling to my camera bag and the tools which, miraculously, I am now able to handle.

“We’ll need to do some paperwork.”

He leads me to another kiosk where he pulls out an A4 form with rows and columns. There are about ten handwritten entries at the top – today’s haul of fellow offenders? I try reading the form upside down as he enters my details, but his script is too small and tight. A handwriting analyst would have a field day interpreting it.

“Okay. You can go back to the departure hall now, but when you return, you’ll have to come to one of the counters to do a manual exit.”

I am back in Australia! I check my watch: ten minutes lost so far, plenty of time yet. An image of myself in the lounge with a drink in hand, crystallises in my mind. Make that two drinks.

My heart sinks when I see the queues at the Fiji Airways counter. As I wait behind a returning family with enough luggage for a small village, I remember that my camera bag has no security. I am about to entrust thousands of dollars of equipment to checked luggage with nary a lock in sight.

It takes ten minutes to reach the desk of the woman who checked my bags earlier. I’m heartened that she remembers me.

“Do you have any gaffer tape?” I ask, as I roll out my predicament for the fourth time.

She disappears behind another counter. “This should do,” she says, brandishing a roll of tape used to tag luggage for its intended destination. She wraps several strips of it over the bag, looping a few 'Fragile’ stickers across the strap for good measure. A small child would have the lot unpicked in under sixty seconds.

I return to the border security kiosks and choose one with a female officer on duty. She looks bemused as I explain myself. Maybe I’m her first case of misplaced camera housing tools.

“You can go now,” she says, returning my passport, “enjoy your trip.”

I check my watch: I’ve managed to leave Australia twice in thirty minutes.