To travel hopefully …
In August 2006 I arrived at Melbourne Airport to catch a flight that would take me to London and on to Edinburgh where I was due to present a paper at an international conference on ‘art and society’. About a week before my departure Heathrow Airport in London had been thrown into prolonged chaos in the wake of credible threats made to use bombs to bring down undisclosed flights to the USA and I found that extraordinary security measures had been imposed on all passengers travelling to or through Heathrow Airport. A ban had been imposed on all cabin bags and the only thing that each passenger could carry on board was a clear plastic bag with passport and documents; even pens were banned to prevent their potential use as weapons. The early symptoms of a head cold that I felt when the plane took off had blossomed into a raging illness by the time the plane landed, some 24 hours later, at Heathrow.
Because I had travelled with a set of car keys in my pocket, I was plucked out of the line of passengers wanting transit on to Edinburgh and told that I would need to check out through airport security and re-enter the domestic terminal so that my keys could be given a security clearance. It mattered little because all flights to Edinburgh had been cancelled for the day and no intending passengers – transit or otherwise – could get inside the overcrowded domestic terminal. A security guard told me that I needed to head for an information marquee erected outside the terminal to get information about possible flights to Edinburgh. The marquee was too small to cope with the crowds of people wanting to know if or when they might be able to get on a plane and I was obliged to wait in a very long queue. To make matters worse it started to rain. I stood in the rain, clutching my plastic bag and nursing a heavy head, alongside a woman holding an infant; all of us hoping that we would eventually make it inside the tent. I felt I got a small insight into what it might feel like to be a refugee or asylum seeker, although we were blessed by the presence of some cheerful volunteers from the city and by the some amusing running commentary offered by a Scottish joker in the queue. A sense of great frustration slowly transformed into a palpable feeling of camaraderie as people took time to share stories and boost each other’s spirits. A volunteer took the mother and her family to the head of the queue inside the tent, amid cheers from those alarmed at her plight.
After a night in an expensive Heathrow hotel, I managed to get myself on a flight to Edinburgh although my booked-in luggage would not arrive for more than a week. With only the clothes I was wearing and my small plastic bag I finally arrived at my university accommodation, grateful to see the sun shining for a change. The next day I set out for an exploratory walk around a city in a mood to enjoy its annual festival season and high on the hill, before reaching the famed castle, I noticed a sign pointing to a rather quaint old stone building that served as the Edinburgh Writers Centre. In a room dedicated to the work of the celebrated novelist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson a quote from his work was prominently displayed, as if designed to catch my attention. It read: ‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’
The Stevenson citation spoke directly to my own travel experience because I learnt to enjoy the journey once I stopped worrying about when, or even if, I would reach my destination. I learnt something about my own resilience and about the capacity of my fellow travellers to act with unusual care towards each other. At a global level, humanity is heading into a period of great uncertainty. No one can really be sure what lies ahead of us. However, we will learn a lot about what we are capable of achieving together if we can learn to travel hopefully.