Family history across the seas

My 2025 A to Z theme is Airports, Airstrips, Aircraft, and Airlines I’ve known and flown with. I’ll be using IATA codes where they’re available. My inner travel agent emerges at this point as I’m the FTO (family travel organiser) and now, the online travel agent.

WWK              Wewak Airport (also known as Boram Airport), Wewak, PNG

Wewak was another airport we travelled to specifically for visits to family. For my husband, it was a return to a place where he’d lived as a young lad, shortly before heading off to boarding school.

I don’t have any photos of the airport so I will leave you with one of himself, his dad, and Tinka their dog.

WHO   Franz Josef Glacier, South Island, New Zealand

This is another airport code that’s up for debate. We can’t be entirely sure at this stage whether we landed on: Franz Josef or Fox Glacier. Since I can’t find an IATA code I’ve opted for Franz Josef. We flew in on a Mt Cook Airlines ski plane. Either way, we had planned the flight and stayed at Mt Cook the night before – possibly the coldest we’d ever been in accommodation, with wind coming through every crack and snow building up outside. The two daughters we had at the time thoroughly enjoyed their experience of being in snow (while rugged up). Interesting that this airline was retired and brought under the banner of Air New Zealand.

WIL     Nairobi Wilson Airport, Nairobi, Kenya

This airport was the gateway to and from safaris to Kichwa Tembo (KTJ) and Elephant Bedroom Camp (UAS). I can visualize this airport, but there was nothing exciting about it, though it did have coffee for sale.

WLG    Wellington airport, Wellington, New Zealand

After much memory-digging, we have realized that our 1984 trip to New Zealand began in Wellington. Neither of us has memories of the airport but we caught the ferry to the south island, hiring a mini-van for our sightseeing travel around the island.

WHY or HOW?

Have you been wondering how on earth we have managed so many flights especially in the early years of our marriage in PNG. No, we didn’t win the lottery, except when it came to employment conditions. Peter was on a basic salary, and even up to when we left PNG, I remained a casual like other married women. The benefit, though, was that his contract included return first class airfares, which in his case was to Melbourne, Victoria. During our first two years, leave was three months every two years and it was expected, and taken for granted, that you would head out of PNG. After that, leave was granted at six weeks every year. It’s important to know there were few roads in PNG outside the towns, other than the Highlands Highway so that certainly required more flights both for family or work.

Now if you consider that just being in Australia for that length of time could become very expensive with accommodation and car hire, transferring the value of the fare to economy overseas travel became a great idea. Realistically, we couldn’t stay with my parents who only had a two-bedroom house, and his were in PNG, so we planned various overseas trips.

When we “went finish” ie left PNG permanently, this advantage disappeared. For the next 14 years or so we took our holidays off-season and went camping (tents only). The only exception was a trip to New Zealand to take the kids skiing in 1984.

Our moment of mid-life madness led us to take up employment in Darwin and from then on, we were empty nesters earning decent salaries. Northern Territory employment conditions also gave us six weeks leave a year. (a historic condition due to the region’s distance). From then on, our travelling expanded internationally but also domestically, to visit my parents and any daughter who wasn’t in Darwin.

Apart from our final flight from PNG in 1978, we have only travelled economy except for the upgrade from LAX for me and SIN-DRW for him. Every time I think longingly how much nicer it would be to fly in Business or even Premium Economy, given our height and increasing girth, I look at the costs and resign myself to using the money for more travel. While we do work at accruing points, most go on visiting family in Darwin and now we do sometimes upgrade to flying business as it’s a 4 hour flight.

What sort of employment conditions have you had in terms of holidays/leave? Do you upgrade from economy or choose higher classes? Do you work to accrue frequent flyer points for a preferred airline? How I long to turn left when entering the aircraft.