And just like that Three Happy Cats were off to Australia for a month. One of us was a regular visitor to Oz but it’s a bucket list first for this tomcat.

Travel-time to Sydney, NSW from Vancouver, BC is around 15 hours of flight. I was well-prepared for the trip with a very heavy dose of cannabis-infused edibles. I was also advised to pick up a good neck pillow—and I’m glad I did. A fleece blanket/throw also helped in getting comfortable and being able to sleep on the plane.

We took the ‘red-eye’ leaving at 11:40 pm. I was tired from being up all day so by the time I got on board I was ready for sleep. Soon after we took off we were served a hot meal and shortly after that I was fully able to sleep for nearly half of the flight. By my phone’s BC time, I dropped off to sleep around 12:30am and woke about 7:30am—pretty good for sleeping on a plane with only edibles to help.

An interesting point about the flight is that they had us all close the window shades at night and most folks chose to keep them closed the next day. With the absence of natural light it made flight-time seem to pass quicker, similar to the casinos in Las Vegas where without the light to judge time you lose track of it.

As we neared our destination the flight attendants had everyone fill out two cards for immigration: the first one, obviously about Ebola, asked if I had travelled to Africa in the last six weeks. The second card was a standard Aussie immigration card asking about things we might be carrying like tobacco, liquor and food products. They also asked about criminal records so do your homework before trying to go to Australia.

When the plane arrived in Australia, officials came on board the plane to spray it for bugs while everyone sat in their seats for 10 minutes. I hid under my blanket during this air-bound assault.

There were some minor difficulties at immigration and we were temporarily down one Happy Cat. We ran errands and killed time waiting for permission to collect them. And then took a taxi to our hotel, still waiting. But before we could get really worried about our travelling companion, we got word from Australian Immigration: our third Happy Cat was on route to meet us!

After reuniting, we set out in search of something to eat and to smoke. Taking local transit to Bondi Beach, we didn’t find any weed but we did find a nice spot to eat on the boardwalk and watch the surfers and scores of runners—it seemed like every other person there was working out or playing a sport.

After eating we were luckily able to visit a friend of a friend and scored some Aussie bush weed to see us through till we could find some ‘Hydro’—AAA indoor cannabis. The bush weed was typical of most well-grown outdoor bud in tropical climates: hairy and greenish-brown but not too harsh and it did the job. It was a good start to our Adventure in Oz.