Trip of a lifetime it hadn’t been but winning the weekly competition a year later would guarantee the entrée to a replicated return that might have made it so.

Australia Post had invited the whole of the country to enter. The requirement was to write 250 words about a holiday that went awry.

A first email from the organisers announcing that my entry had won week 5 was dismissed as a prank. I’d never won anything before.

The second email preceded a phone call informing me, “Yes, you really did win and are in with a chance to attain the ultimate prize.”

Eventually scepticism was replaced by actuality. Gushing from head to toe, in my unbridled delight I happened to mention that my son worked part-time for Australia Post.

The silence told me that my gargantuan mouth had opened once too often. It was against the rules for a winner to be a relative of an employee, no matter how minor he was in the organisation. There followed a flurry of calls and sadly, the title was stripped before being officially conferred.

Still, they were kind enough to let me keep the prize. At least the first honeymoon lasted longer than the second! Here is the ‘winning’ essay:

“Our honeymoon was the dream visit to Victoria Falls via a famous ship. But before we stepped off Queen Mary 2, poor Anna had been struck down by a virus that was to dog her throughout the African leg.

As the plane descended over Zimbabwe, she barely made out the streams of spume reaching up like white silky tentacles, conjunctivitis conspiring to blitz her vision.
Morning at the elegant Edwardian hotel built in 1904, the first to overlook the falls, meant a tasty African breakfast for me and miserable medicinal tea for her. Yet nothing would keep Anna in bed a moment longer as we joined the trail to view the spectacle for which we’d come.

Well, almost nothing, for an impromptu elephant encounter saw us snap to its imperious preference that we detour around his tree-top feasting. Leaping aside, I nearly knocked my new bride over but her sense of humour remained. “I’ll wait while you’re getting away.”

We made it to the entrance with the help of a guide.

Here was a matchless sight; a rampaging torrent like the power of all-Africa, thousands of tonnes of water plunging down hundred metre precipices, terrifying in its intensity. Boiling, combining, screaming and eternally unstoppable. Unbelievable!

It was a testament to Anna’s endurance that she could even open her eyes that day let alone trek around the cliffs. She missed out on so much yet remained stoic.
To do it again, this time hale and hearty, is a dream we share.”