An Austrian wedding

Next month my brother Hamish and sister-in-law Karin celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. I cannot believe it’s been three decades. How the time has flown by. To get to the wedding, I booked myself a three-week round-the-world ticket. This was the first RTW ticket I ever bought. I recall sitting in the travel agent’s office, astounded by the concept as he suggested it as a great way to maximise the experience.

As a result, I booked an itinerary that had me fly to South Africa, where I spent a week exploring Joburg, Pretoria and Victoria Falls, before going on safari in Zimbabwe. I then flew to Frankfurt on 15 October and caught a train to Austria for the wedding, which was held the following day. A few days later I took Mum and Dad on a tour through Prague and Berlin, before returning to Frankfurt by train.

From Germany it was onward to Los Angeles for a 48-hour stopover, before making my way to Hawaii. Here I was joined by a good friend, Richard Knight, who was something of a party animal. It would be fair to say we spent the next three nights bar-hopping and partying with newfound friends collected along the way. If I’m honest, I saw very little of this popular island state beyond the beach and hotel. I finally completed my round-the-world circuit with an overnight flight home to Sydney.

A few days before flying out of Sydney, my hairdresser had convinced me to go for a bottled blonde look. As a result, I turned up in Germany with a tightly cropped flat-top haircut, bleached pure blonde. I was going for the cool Billy Idol look. However, a week in the relentless African sun did a number on my stylish hairdo.  I ultimately rocked up with a haircut that had morphed into a subtle orange hue.  Let's just say it was the talk of the town when I arrived.   

Hamish’s wedding was a cross-cultural affair, blending both traditional Church of England and European Catholic traditions. The guest list also included friends and family from around the world. My Uncle Rex flew in from New Zealand, along with my cousin Tim and his partner Robyn, plus my parents, my brother Matt and his partner Shelley. Karin’s relatives from the UK also flew in to join the festivities.

The wedding celebrations began the night before the ceremony with a large gathering at the Londoner pub in central Kitzbuhel. The evening became a kind of proxy bucks and hens’ night for the soon-to-be-wed couple. This venue also held special significance. It was here, on Christmas Eve in 1990, that Hamish and Karin first met.

Let’s just say it was a rather raucous evening. Furthermore, I would never confirm or deny that my Uncle Rex made an impromptu visit to the porcelain gods shortly after we returned to our accommodation.  Needless to say, a few of us were a little rusty at breakfast the following morning.

Many of the guests, including the New Zealand family members and me, were accommodated in the neighbour’s house next door to Karin’s parents’ home. The neighbours were on vacation and had kindly made their home available to Hermann and Helen’s international guests. The venue was inevitably dubbed “New Zealand House”.

The wedding ceremony took place at the local Rathaus. That’s not a vermin-infested venue. Rather, the name is German for Town Hall. The happy couple looked splendid. Matt was Hamish’s best man, while Karin’s brother and I acted as witnesses on the marriage certificate. When asking me to witness the certificate, Hamish aptly described the request as, “I’d like you to witness our marriage, assuming you’re comfortable signing documents written in German that you cannot read. It’s something I do all the time”.

The reception afterwards was held at a local restaurant, a short walk from the Rathaus, before guests returned to Hermann and Helen’s iconic traditionally gabled mountainside home. Guests mingled on the lawn of their expansive backyard. At one stage, a group of locals turned up and delivered a wonderful Bavarian Oompah band experience, complete with lederhosen costumes and traditional instruments.

It was a magical day. The weather played its part; although it was Autumn in the Austrian Alps, conditions were mainly cool and overcast. The crowd was filled with joy for the happy couple. Everyone was left with many wonderful memories. It’s hard to believe this all happened three decades ago. Congratulations, Hamish and Karin.

One final confession. I never packed a suit for the wedding. I thought about it at the time but decided this was a mountain wedding and my brother was never big on formalities. I naively assumed the dress code was smart casual. Although, if truth be told, I also wondered if I could safely transport a suit across the globe, especially while on safari at a bush camp in Southern Africa. In hindsight, I wish I'd packed it anyway - just in case.

Hong Kong for the first time

In all my years of travel, I have very few regrets. I’ve made the most of so many business trips and explored the wider world. However, two regrets always stand out. One occurred while visiting London on business in 2002. At the time, British Airways was offering a special deal flying Concorde to New York. You could book a ticket on the supersonic jet in one direction and return on a regular Jumbo Jet for a remarkably affordable price.

I debated the merits of booking myself an indulgent weekend but decided it wasn’t a great look professionally. At the time, our tech industry-centric company had just spent a year closing offices and cutting jobs worldwide following the dot.com bust. While it was the right move politically, to this day I rue the day I turned down an opportunity to fly Concorde. A year later, the supersonic airliner was permanently grounded, and the opportunity was gone for good.

My second regret was one of sheer inertia. For several years in the late 1990s, I had several friends living in Hong Kong, including my longest-standing friendship in Australia with Michele Olsen. I’d always wanted to experience the hair-raising landing at Kai Tak Airport, the city’s primary airport until July 1998.

The airport’s geography meant that pilots were forced to fly down Victoria Harbour, plot their location using a giant checkerboard pattern on the aptly named Checkboard Hill, where upon they’d make a low-altitude (below 180 metres), 47-degree right-hand turn, ending with a short final approach and touchdown on a runway extending into the harbour. For pilots, this airport was technically demanding, as the approach could not be flown by instruments. It had to be flown visually, thanks to that notorious last-minute right-hand turn.

Sadly, I never did get my act together. As a result, when I finally booked my first trip to Hong Kong in 2000, the airport had long since relocated to its current location at Chek Lap Kok. Ironically, after so many years of procrastination, I ultimately visited the city twice that year. My first trip was a brief four-night vacation. I landed on the evening of 16 March and departed again on 20 March 2000. Three months later, I flew back to Hong Kong courtesy of a company called Network Asia, a regional tech start-up, to conduct media training for its top executives.

Michele went all out for my first visit. At the time, she was employed as an au pair for a wealthy expat family. The family had given her a convertible to drive as part of her employment. One evening, after meeting up for dinner, she decided to drive me over the recently opened Tsing Ma Bridge. This 1377-metre-long suspension bridge was part of a new highway linking the city with its new airport on Lantau Island.

Michele knew I was a civil engineering fanatic and thus decided I’d enjoy driving the entire Lantau Link that included a new cross-harbour tunnel, freeway system and the new suspension bridge. We made our way to Tsing Ma Bridge with the roof down in her employer’s convertible, enjoying the sea breeze and city lights at night.

The bridge itself was brilliantly lit with an impressive floodlit display soaring overhead as we drove. About halfway over the span, the floodlights suddenly turned off, as they did every night at 10:00pm. Decades later, I still recall the moment. Remember, we were in a convertible with lighting visible in every direction, including the suspension cables directly overhead. Hence, the sudden switch to near-complete darkness was truly dramatic.

On another occasion, Michele picked me up from my hotel, drove us up Victoria Peak to enjoy its iconic harbour view, and then across Hong Kong Island to spend an afternoon wandering through the eclectic markets in Stanley, a beachside town on the island’s rugged southern coast. I also remember this being the first time I met her future husband, David, who was enjoying a wild time in Wanchai celebrating St. Patrick's Day (on 17 March) with other expats. 

As you can see from the images above, I took time out to explore the bustling street markets in Mong Kok, including its famous bird, fish and flower markets. As a first-time visitor, I also did the classic tourist thing and watched the Noonday Gun being fired in Causeway Bay. 

On my penultimate day in town, I booked myself a day trip to the former Portuguese colony of Macau. I caught the high-speed ferry to Macau, and then on a whim, caught a helicopter back to Hong Kong. You can read about my day in Macau here. On Monday, 21 March, I caught an overnight flight with Ansett Australia back to Sydney, flying via Brisbane.

As I noted earlier, a few months later, I unexpectedly returned to Hong Kong on business. At the time, I was managing the account of a new regional internet service provider start-up company called Network Asia. Michael Dunn, the regional marketing manager, was an expat Brit who’d spent many years living in Hong Kong. He took a shine to me and asked me to fly up from Sydney and spend a day media training their senior executives. I flew into Hong Kong on Saturday 17 June and back out again on Wednesday 21 June.

At the time, the dot.com boom was peaking, and like all well-financed start-ups, Network Asia was splashing cash like nobody’s business. I was flown business class to Hong Kong and put up in the uber-lux five-star Mandarin Hotel in Wanchai. Michael was happy to fly me in on the weekend so that I could catch up with friends before starting work on Monday. My first working day wasn't exactly exhausting. It began with a planning meeting and a leisurely lunch at the exclusive expat Press Club in the Mid-Levels district. 

The company’s headquarters were equally extravagant. They were housed in a high-level office building in Wanchai. The company’s entrance lobby, halfway up the building, was a multi-level atrium with a lush garden wall and Feng Shui water feature. I couldn’t believe I was looking at an indoor waterfall flowing high above the street below. Unsurprisingly, two years later, the company ran out of funding and closed its doors in 2002.

I’d return to Hong Kong regularly for many years on business, particularly after becoming the Regional Director for Asia Pacific in May 2002. I was also in Hong Kong during the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001. After leaving Text 100, I continued to visit Hong Kong once a year to attend an industry trade show and meet with some of Artiwood’s Asian-based suppliers. I maintained this routine until January 2020. We stopped attending these events after the COVID pandemic. As of today, the trip I took from 6-8 January 2020 was my last visit to Hong Kong.

This final trip is worth a special note. In the months leading up to this visit, Hong Kong had been racked by increasingly violent and desperate protests. Between March and November 2019, hundreds of thousands of people had been regularly turning out for rallies and marches to express opposition to a bill allowing extrajudicial detention and extradition to Mainland China. As the months passed, the protests became increasingly violent as Mainland-sponsored vigilantes began attacking protesters and the police responded with increasingly aggressive tactics.

These protests reached their most desperate moment in November of that year when protesters took control of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Kowloon and blockaded the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. The protest siege ended when police eventually stormed the campus. Sadly, these protests were in vain. A revised version of the extradition bill was eventually passed into law in May 2020. I've illustrated these dramatic events using images pulled from Wikipedia.

By chance, I found myself attending a meeting with a supplier at their hotel near PolyU in January 2020. As I exited the station, I found myself standing in the heartland of the student protests that had taken place just seven weeks earlier. Temporary hoarding and residual graffiti were still visible as I walked to my meeting from Hung Hom metro station. It was another of those special moments where I’ve been privileged to experience a headline-making, or historical, location first-hand.

On a more positive note, this final business trip also included a dinner with Angie and Ivan, owners of an organic plush toy brand we distributed. My hosts generously entertained me at VEA, an exclusive, intimate fine dining venue overlooking central Hong Kong. We were treated to a selection of vintage champagne and Kristal caviar, followed by a series of delicate dishes individually curated, prepared and presented by a private chef working in an open kitchen at our table.  It was undoubtedly one of the most decadent evenings I've ever spent in all my years of business travel.

I remember where I was

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 is almost upon us. It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed since this brazen and deadly terrorist attack on American soil. The intervening years have failed to diminish the mind-numbing statistics that haunt this infamous date.

On that day, 19 terrorists planned and subsequently hijacked four airliners. They then flew one into each of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The third plane crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field during a passenger revolt.

A total of 2996 lost their lives that day, including the 19 murder-suicide hijackers. Countless more died prematurely in the years that followed from exposure to the toxic dust that engulfed lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers fell. The New York skyline was forever changed in an instant, along with aviation security. The death and destruction which occurred that day, in the heart of the world’s financial capital, was simply beyond comprehension.

Much like the generation before me who recall where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, my generation can recall where they were when news broke that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. I was in Hong Kong at the time.  I’d flown in from Tokyo a few days earlier, on 8 September, after spending three weeks on secondment training and supporting the executive team in Japan. Tokyo has become the company’s most problematic APAC office, so I'd been seconded to help with its reformation.

On September 11, APAC’s Regional Director flew in from Sydney late in the afternoon and joined me for a debrief over dinner. We returned to our hotel around 8:30pm. At the time, we were staying at Bishop Lei International House, an unassuming three-star establishment in Mid-Levels on Hong Kong Island. Its rooms were tiny, barely fitting a bed and side table, and its amenities were limited. For example, the only English-language channel on television was CNN. As a result, I'd often watch it after dinner, which I did that day.

At 8:49pm, minutes after turning on the TV, CNN cut live to scenes of smoke pouring from the World Trade Centre's North Tower. American Airlines Flight 11 had struck the building just three minutes earlier, at 8:46 am local time. Along with millions of others, I watched live as a second plane struck the South Tower soon after. I still remember seeing United Airlines Flight 175's fuzzy silhouette coming into view as a news anchor speculated on what was happening. I thought to myself, the camera angle made the plane look unusually close to the unfolding tragedy. 

As the hours passed, I watched live as the Pentagon was struck, flights were grounded across the USA, and each tower fell. I kept watching until 7 World Trade Centre collapsed at 5:20am Hong Kong Time. I eventually grabbed a few hours of sleep. Marty Lederhandler's award-winning image above poignantly captured the surreal nature of the terrorist attacks. Cloudless blue skies. A serene Empire State Building. It really was just another sunny day in the Big Apple.

I recall vividly just how hypnotic the news coverage was. The scenes being broadcast live simply beggared belief. There was also a palpable fear that high-profile buildings were being targeted globally. At the time, my company’s Hong Kong office was based in the Bank of China building. Its distinctive diagonal facade made it one of the city’s most iconic towers. If terrorists were targeting high-profile buildings worldwide, then this was an obvious target. Should I stay away from the office?

At one point, emotionally overwhelmed, I tried calling my parents to tell them I loved them. However, they were driving through Portugal on a tour bus, without international roaming access. They remained unaware of the news unfolding in the USA until they reached their hotel later that evening. Real-time online messaging was still years away. When the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre, it was a full six years before the first iPhone. There was no WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. 

As you can imagine, very little work got done in the office the following day. Instead, we sat around recalling the events from the previous night, reflecting on the profound shock and utter disbelief we all felt. Newspapers delivered to the office became a stark reminder of everything we’d witnessed. Hong Kong’s tabloid newspapers printed graphic images on their front page. This included photos of people clinging to pillars near the ugly gash American Airlines Flight 11 had carved through the North Tower, and of people falling to their deaths. It was interesting insight into cultural differences. 

Over the years I’ve become used to Chinese media publishing graphic images Australian media outlets would consider gratuitous in nature. That said, much to my surprise, the Australian Financial Review's front page on September 12 led with "The Falling Man", a confronting image of a jumper.

On 13 September I caught an evening flight back to Sydney. As fate would have it, I was flying Ansett Australia. While my Boeing 747 flew south, Australia’s second-largest airline collapsed into liquidation. All flights were cancelled shortly after 10:00 pm, and its aircraft were grounded. My plane, already in the air, was one of the last to land the following morning. If memory serves me well, the last plane, an overnight flight from Perth, landed shortly after us. I recall sitting in the aircraft’s front cabin, which was almost completely empty. It was clear then that 9/11 was already taking its toll on the aviation industry as people deferred or cancelled their travel plans.

Months later, I was in New York on business. I recall visiting Ground Zero and seeing the hole in the ground filled with debris where the towers once stood. Skyscrapers in the surrounding neighbourhood still bore the scars of the day. This included broken windows, damaged facades and boarded-up street-floor tenancies. It was hard to comprehend that the South Tower, and its 108-floor outdoor observation deck I’d once enjoyed, was gone. That's a retrospective post for another time. A decade later, I took Mum and Dad to visit the 9/11 memorial, just months before Dad passed away.

I read recently that Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on Flight 11, was born just two months after me. She was murdered at the age of 35. As I reflect on my life and last year’s 60th birthday celebration, her death resonates deeply. I have so many wonderful memories from the last 25 years, while Amy was cruelly denied the same experience. This really brings home the tragic human toll of that fateful day. Likewise, my memories of Hong Kong will be forever linked with those of 9/11.

One final note. I've illustrated parts of this post with photos I took during my second visit to the Big Apple in 1998. A friend, Ian, and I decided on the spur of the moment to take advantage of a discount fare and spend a week in Manhattan. I'll share more about this trip in another post. While in New York, we visited the South Tower Observation Deck. As you can see, the view from 420 metres above street level was truly spectacular.

UPDATE: 11 September 2026

New York City commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with a spectacular drone show on 9 September. A total of 2,977 synchronised drones rose over New York Harbour to recreate the outline of the twin towers in a moving tribute to those killed that day. The number of drones matched exactly the number of lives lost, less those of the 19 terrorists involved. A beautifully haunting display.

Convertible dreams

I once owned a Saab Convertible. It was an impulse purchase I made in October 2004 after receiving an unexpected bonus cheque. At the time, Garry was shopping for a new car. He’d seen a car dealer advertising a new Saab sedan demonstrator model for sale. While visiting the dealer’s showroom, I noticed a 2001 second-hand convertible for sale in the yard. On a whim, I decided to take it for a test drive.

I’d always wanted a convertible. The 2001 model in the yard was a Saab’s first-generation convertible. An owner who’d bought Saab’s recently launched second-generation model had traded it in. After a test drive and a brief negotiation, I decided to buy it. For the next 12 months, I proudly drove around Sydney in my fancy convertible. It came with heated seats, aircon and powerful heaters that delivered a warm stream of air, perfect for driving with the roof down in winter.

However, there were some aspects of the car that I didn’t enjoy. The first-generation chassis wasn’t as rigid as it could have been, especially for a vehicle lacking the inherent stiffness of an enclosed passenger cabin. As a result, the car would shimmer subtly if you drove over an uneven surface or hit a pothole. The sensation was a little disconcerting. Saab fixed this issue on its second-generation model.

The car was also built using a standard sedan footprint. This meant that it had a relatively spacious rear seat. Mitchell, Garry’s nephew, recalls Garry and I driving up to Rouse Hill to show his family my new toy. We took him and his brother Adam for a drive to McDonald's – with the roof down, of course! Two decades later, Mitch still remembers sitting in the back seat, driving through his local neighbourhood.

However, the spacious rear seat meant the car had an unusually long chassis, especially for a two-door vehicle. I hated parking it. The rear end always seemed much further away than anticipated (and this was before rear reversing cameras were a thing). Hence, it was no surprise when I eventually hit a pillar while backing into a car space at work. I’d already come perilously close to hitting stationary objects elsewhere on more than one occasion. As an aside, I recently found a receipt for $599.50 for repairs made by a panelbeater in Artarmon.

Given my love-hate relationship with the car, it was a relatively easy decision to sell it a year later when Garry and I agreed to relocate to London. I ultimately sold it to a private broker in September 2005 and used the proceeds to fund the sabbatical we enjoyed en route to the United Kingdom. Sadly, second-hand convertibles lose value faster than regular vehicles, so the final price was less than expected. I was also running out of time as our scheduled departure for the UK was approaching rapidly.

The broker was a little dodgy. He quoted one price, then after viewing the car, tried to lowball it using some flimsy excuse. I stood my ground, reaffirming that his original price was the only offer on the table. The broker was also operating from a spare bedroom at the Horizon apartment tower in Darlinghurst. At the time, this was one of Sydney’s premier high-rise apartment buildings. It’s not exactly the place you’d expect to find employees buying and selling vehicles in a room furnished with nothing more than desks and computer monitors.

He offered to write me a personal cheque, or if I waited, he’d go to the bank and raise a bank cheque. I elected to wait while he went to the bank. As I recall, I lost thousands on the price I’d paid 12 months earlier. However, it'd be fair to say I made peace with the hefty write-down while standing in front of the pyramids in Cairo a few months later. I doubt I’ll ever own a convertible again.