We had returned to Saudi Arabia from our summer holidays – a month spent in Scandinavia, refreshingly cool and beautifully green, so very different.

In Saudi Arabia, the magnificence and raw beauty of golden sands and dunes, and the fascination of a very different culture and people were offset at times by the blistering and scorching heat. We’d lived there for a little more than nineteen months, and for most of the year the temperatures were in the mid to high forties (between 105 and125 degrees Fahrenheit), so we tried to have a break twice a year.

My husband was on a two-year business contract for the Australian Government. Our three children attended the American International School in Riyadh, a school with more than eighty nationalities; they had nearly a month left before school was to resume after the summer holidays.

They spent a lot of time in the late afternoon with their friends on the compound, enjoying the usual childhood games, roller-skating on the concrete paths and courtyards, collecting huge creamy dates and packaging them to sell to our neighbours within the walled compound, and swimming in the compound pool. Before late afternoon, it was too hot to be outdoors. Life was relaxed and happy.

Imagine then our horror when, on the morning of August 2, 1990, we learned from BBC news that our neighbouring country, Kuwait, had been invaded by more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, and its government had been deposed.

The Persian Gulf was fabulously wealthy with oil resources, and that single act of invasion shocked the world and destabilised the whole Gulf region. It was expected that Saudi Arabia would be next to be invaded. The Saudi army was mobilised, but these were soldiers who were used to wearing sandals and their long white “thobes”, a loose-fitting garment which offered a measure of protection from the heat. Their preparation for combat was minimal. Within days, the Persian Gulf region was on high alert. Other countries who had nationals in Saudi Arabia were planning evacuations.

Before we went to Saudi Arabia we attended several briefing sessions – and one of the things stressed to us was the importance of keeping our passports with us at all times. Yet the first thing we had to do upon arrival was to surrender our passports to the Saudi parent company. If we wished to leave, we had to apply for an exit visa, only given after checks and approval from government authorities. Without an exit visa, it was impossible to leave.

Other ex-patriate companies immediately applied for exit visas, and the Saudi government was busy processing them. The Australian government, less familiar with the history and background of Middle Eastern conflicts, projected a typically Australian “she’ll be right, mate!” point of view, and their laid-back unconcerned attitude meant that as every other country’s expatriate workforce disappeared, the Australians were left behind, confused and worried. It became evident that if we were not evacuated quickly, we might end up being caught in serious conflict, trapped in a foreign country, and perhaps kept hostage to international negotiations – or worse.

As the days passed, the situation grew more concerning. Finally, our government decided that our company should also evacuate. We were the last of the foreign companies remaining in Saudi Arabia. We were told that women and children would leave first, and be flown to England, where we would be transferred to the next available flights back to Australia. The men would follow within a week.

We were placed on standby until our exit visas were ready. We were to pack only one suitcase per family; all our other possessions would remain behind until the situation was clarified. Furthermore, we were forbidden to leave the compound. A few days later, we were told to remain within our villas.

 Finally, the orders were given. We would leave at midnight. I woke the children and hustled them into the car, the girls and I cloaked in our black abayas. The motorcade of black cars drove in convoy to the airport. It was hard to look out at the city and countryside I had grown to care for, value and appreciate, knowing it might well be for the last time.

At the airport, the men said a quick goodbye and were ushered to an upper observation area. The last thing our five-year-old son, Joe, said to him was, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll look after Mum and the girls.”

An old retired Irish plane had been brought back into service for our evacuation – it did not inspire confidence. The project manager had to pay for its refuelling – but the powers-that-be would not accept the company cheque. The project manager drove back into Riyadh and returned an hour later with a suitcase filled with cash, just as one might see in a movie. This was checked and accepted. The suitcase changed hands.

I jokingly remarked to our manager that I hoped there was enough cash to pay for the refuelling of all four engines. He scowled, not amused. Everyone was very tense.

Our passports were returned to us. We sadly waved a final good-bye to my husband, looking forlorn, but brave, alongside the other men. 

Finally, we boarded. As we cleared Saudi airspace, cheering erupted. The women and children felt safe. Alcohol started to flow – I never knew the source, as alcohol was strictly forbidden in the kingdom, and possession of alcohol, if discovered, would lead to immediate expulsion.

There was just one attendant for the several hundred women and children; she brought trays of food at around two o’clock in the morning, a weird time to eat. But protocols were followed. This was followed by a sack of apples – dessert. We each reached into the hessian sack and chose a rosy, red apple, but they were bad on the inside. Inedible.

No one came to collect the empty trays, so they mounted up on the back seats of the plane. Meanwhile, one of the women obviously drank too much, and passed out on the floor of the plane, almost completely blocking the aisle.

The plane was old, and the flight was bumpy and unpleasant. Nevertheless, I encouraged the children to sleep.

It was around four thirty in the morning when we landed at Kent International Airport, from where we were to be taken by coach to London. We climbed around the lady still prone in the aisle, and exited the aircraft, thankful to be safely on English soil.

Blinding glare immediately dazzled us – we were surrounded by television cameras, and dozens of journalists. Our company policy decreed that we were forbidden to talk to the reporters about our experiences – apart from one company spokesperson who praised our company, our government and all the evacuation procedures. I believe the rest of us simply rolled our eyes.

The children, very tired from such a strange and difficult night, were further confused when caps, with “Kent International Airport” embroidered on them, were thrust at them – a token of welcome.

“Mum, why are they giving us caps to wear when it’s night-time?” Joe asked, perplexed. I had no answer.

Wearily we made our way to the coach assigned to us, and began the journey to London, arriving as the city was starting to stir in the early morning light.

Anna, Bella, Joe and I were allocated to the Russell Hotel, as were two or three other families. Any and all hotels with vacant rooms were being used to accommodate us.

Our first need was to buy warm clothes. London in August felt like winter after the heat of Saudi Arabia – but warm clothes were hard to find. We bought what we could, explored London with our friends each day – and waited for further instructions about our flight to Australia. We phoned my husband each evening. The men were still awaiting the processing of their exit visas.

When, after nearly a week, our flight details were at last given, the children were in a panic. We were leaving their father behind in Saudi Arabia. I could only reassure them that he would follow us back to Australia as soon as he could. We would find each other.

The problem was that our home was rented out on a two-year contract. All our belongings were in storage. We had no home to return to.

My sister, who lived a thousand kilometres away, offered us temporary accommodation in her small home, not easy for any of us. 

It soon became clear, however, that the men were not permitted to leave. Their exit visas would not be processed - there was never any intention for them to follow within a week. They would remain in Saudi Arabia until their contracts were fulfilled, towards the end of December. Would we see him again? Would Iraq invade? Would Australians be held as hostages? Who knew?

Would we be allowed back into Saudi Arabia? The answer, a month later, was no. The area was too volatile.

I had settled the children into a new school, with their cousin – and of course, they started in fourth term, as the Australian school year starts at the end of January. The school systems were not synchronised. More confusion for the children. They would either already know the work they were being taught, having done it already in Saudi Arabia, or they would miss some learning.

When it was announced that we could not return, we moved into a rented apartment, still maintaining phone contact with my husband two or three times a week; we knew he was safe. He had little news – just went to work, returned home to an empty villa, and filled the long, lonely hours as best he could. The men organised social get-togethers for company.

Bella, aged eight, cried every night, missing him badly. Finally, after three months, feeling frazzled myself, I told her to “Stop crying every night. We know he’s safe!” She stopped her nighttime crying ritual and became a little more relaxed as well. Joe, on the other hand, had not cried once. Perhaps, he felt, as the man of our household, he had to be strong and brave. Yet I felt that he should have cried. He was still so young, now just turned six.

One Saturday after Anna and Bella’s gymnastics class, we heard the news on the radio. Their school was on fire. Several wings were damaged beyond repair, including Joe’s classroom. That night, for the first time, he cried.

He still wanted to be the brave one.

“I’m not crying about Dad,” he sobbed, inconsolable. “I’m crying because the school burnt down. I’m crying because our teacher’s piano got burnt. I’m crying because she said her mother gave her the piano, and now she hasn’t got it.”

It was a release of tension nevertheless, and that night he cuddled up to me in my bed, for the first time, needing reassurance that his whole world would not be ruined for ever. For the next week or two the children had their lessons under the trees in the playground, until temporary classrooms could be installed.

It was four and a half months before we heard that Dad was coming home. He had fulfilled his contract requirements; an exit visa would be processed.

Once again, we packed. I’d had to buy a car of course, as well as the multiple necessities for daily living – school bags and other necessities, linen, multiple appliances, a radio …. One suitcase of clothes was insufficient for trying to recreate a normal life for the children. 

We set out for our real home, a trip of more than a thousand kilometres. On December 23, we detoured via the airport, and picked up Dad. He had one suitcase too, which we squeezed into the loaded car. The rest of our possessions from Saudi Arabia would follow weeks later.

We were finally reunited as a family, and back in our own home.

There’d been no closure to our experience, for there’d been no proper good-byes. Not to the schoolfriends the children had expected to see when school resumed, and not at Kent International Airport to say goodbye to friends being ushered onto different coaches for other areas of London. And when the call came about our flight to Australia, no time even to say good-bye to our friends at the Russell Hotel – they were whisked onto a different flight, bound for a different city.

A strange and difficult ending to what had been the experience of a lifetime. A very long trip home.