“I heard myself say ‘I think I’ll go’ … it was out of my mouth before I thought about it, it was subconsciously there.”
The moment law student Cliodhna Rae decided to leave 1970s Co Tyrone for a short “jaunt” to Australia became a life abroad for more than 40 years.
It led to a career in the golden age of air travel [“I’d go to Darwin for lunch and Singapore for dinner”] and eventually to a successful travel business founded “by accident”.
Four decades later, she returned to Northern Ireland in her 60s for what was meant to be a short stay. Now in her 80s and speaking from her home Portstewart, Co Derry, Rae still dreams of Melbourne sunshine.
Rae left her childhood home in Pomeroy at the height of the Troubles, as the era of shillings came to an end and at a time when she was the only woman in her college law class.
Cliodhna Rae now lives in the seaside Derry town of Portstewart but still dreams of Melbourne sunshine. Photograph: iStock
With a desire to escape a divisive society, she decided not to take up the option of living in apartheid South Africa, where her brother was ordained a priest.
Rae grew up hearing stories from her father, who worked as a horserider in Australia as a young man. “It was a big thing going to Australia – there was no sectarianism, so I’d be making friends and not needing to know things like what school they were in.”
She initially went to Australia for a short time on “a jaunt” with her sister. Rae thought she’d have a little holiday before resuming her law studies over there.
But in the pre-internet age she was unable to check details and got the academic dates wrong, arriving in May for an academic year which began in February.
It was chaos, the only thing I knew how to sell was Canada, and at that stage people were going to Thailand and Vietnam
Rae soon ran out of money and had to get a job. “Someone had said to us if you join an airline you can go home [to Northern Ireland] cheaply.” Rae joined local domestic airline Ansett Airways.
She later worked in Canadian Airlines’ Melbourne office, “like a modern-day call centre”. “I’d go home [to Northern Ireland] for three or four days. It used to take my Daddy six weeks to come home by ship.” She organised holidays to Canada, working alongside a woman from Hong Kong. “None of us had been, so we sold it from the brochures.”
She soon found the travel locum company that would sustain her for the next four decades. “I started my own business by accident,” says Rae, who had taken a break from the airline industry for cancer treatment and later to study psychology and business.
One day, a travel agent called her to help cover sick leave at their business. “It was chaos, the only thing I knew how to sell was Canada, and at that stage people were going to Thailand and Vietnam.”
But out of this chaos she spotted an opportunity in an industry full of small owner-operators. “It was a nice little niche discovered by accident,” she says.
The business had its hiccups, including taking four years to convince the phone company that she was not a locum doctor. “I had a list of doctors by my bed” she said of the many 3am emergency phone calls.
Cliodhna Rae: ‘It was a nice little niche discovered by accident,’ she says of her travel locum business
Rae also survived an economic crash which forced her to break a contract on an unaffordable office. “I was very nervous about losing my phone number,” she says, “so we drew a circle around the telephone exchange and found a building we could afford.” She would have to “kick needles off the doorstep” of the building she bought. But Melbourne’s declining core underwent a large-scale urban renewal plan from the mid-1980s. “It turned out to be a good investment,” says Rae.
Technology moved rapidly in the intervening decades, so when Rae returned almost 20 years ago to post-Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland, she was able to run her business remotely.
Rae initially came back for a few months to care for a sick aunt, but stayed. She now lives in the seaside Derry town of Portstewart, with two older siblings, including ordained brother Barney.
Did she ever think of returning to Australia? Rae, who has been busily chatting and reminiscing, pauses. Yes, she had considered moving back to Melbourne after her aunt had died. And now? “If I wasn’t 84 and Barney wasn’t here, I would move back,” she says.
[ When my first child was born the distance from Ireland became a physical acheOpens in new window ]
She still visits, as her sister still lives in Melbourne, aged 91. “I miss my sister, and lovely Melbourne and the beautiful music and the better climate. I travel when I can. And I play it by ear,” she says, with a twinkle.
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