
Date: Feb 1st - 3rd 2013
With snow disrupting my practice for over a week, I was very much looking forward to my trip to Australia to find some sunshine. The day had come to leave the cold and the snow and head 'down under'. The first hurdle was getting the luggage up the drive, which proved difficult with 8" of snow!
First leg of the journey was a 7hr flight to Dubai which was easy enough, it was the second part that I was dreading; 14 hours from Dubai to Brisbane! It wasn't actually as bad as I thought, plenty of films to watch, a steady supply of food and the odd nap in between made the time go by reasonably quickly. My only complaint was the landing, the last 20 minutes were very bumpy as we had arrived just as a cyclone was passing through the Gold Coast. I felt very ill, went quite pale and just wanted to be back on solid ground.
It was such a disappointment to arrive to rain and high winds, we had just flown thousands of miles to escape the bad weather! The next couple of days got progressively worse and the cyclone had caused a lot of disruptions. Flight cancellations, road closures and floods. It got quite frightening at times. We couldn't even practice, the course and all the facilities were closed. We were eventually allowed to walk the course on Wednesday, this was the only opportunity we were going to get before the tournament started. Not the greatest preparation going into my first tournament of the year, but at least the sun had come out and I could start to shake off some of the rust.
Coincidentally, a couple of friendly faces were also out in Australia and had come down specially to watch me, I'd like to thank Gina and Dixie (Dean) it was lovely to have some home support.
Sadly I didn't feel completely comfortable about my game all week. The feel wasn't there and although the putts had a look they seemed to be afraid of the dark. It was frustrating but I knew it wasn't going to be easy. It was just a case of getting back into the swing of things and trying to find something for the following week in New Zealand.
After some good practice on Sunday morning, Sahra and I decided to challenge one another to a tennis match. I hadn't played for the best part of 10 years and I was up against a Wimbledon junior! Well you can guess who won, but it was hysterical. So much fun, and a good workout too.