Love, actually : part II

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Long-distance love - part II
Andrew, 36, met Lindi, 38, at a pilot training college in Adelaide 12 years ago where they were training to become pilots. After a six-year long-distance relationship, they married and moved to Sydney where they now live with their two-year-old daughter, Nicola.

In this excerpt, we speak to Andrew..

Andrew: “Lindi was the one-in-a-million female pilot to get into the South African Airways course. I could see straight away she was definitely someone for me. She was the sort of girl who had strong morals. She was so ladylike, but she still wanted to get out and compete. We would run together – she runs like an Energiser bunny, there‘s no stopping her – and we talked a lot while we ran. She didn’t want a relationship; she was so focused. I managed to convince her to go out to a movie and pizza. We later discovered we each kept that movie ticket stub in our wallets, and we still do.

“I left college to fly for Qantas in Sydney. She drove me to the airport and said goodbye. It wasn’t going to work between us because she thought we were both too passionate about our jobs. She also passionately loved her country; her family have such a strong history in South Africa. From the beginning she told me she wouldn’t leave South African Airways. I remember walking up the stairs and turning around to look back, but I couldn’t see her. At the time I thought she’d turned around and left. Later, she told me she was standing at the window, crying.

“A month later, I received a package from Lindi with some photos and a note saying, ‘I miss you.’ We decided to give it a go, but it was five months before I made it to South Africa. When I arrived, she said if she had to wait that long again, I could forget it.

“I bent over backwards, swapping flights with other pilots so I could get the flights to South Africa. Several people in scheduling at Qantas helped me make this relationship work! I would fly home from seeing Lindi in South Africa, then pack my bags and fly somewhere else for work the next day.

“We did the long distance thing for six years. Because of the ‘romantic’ in me, I never thought it was an option to totally give up, but there were times when we thought it really wouldn‘t work. “Many people said we were mad. What kept me going was knowing she was the woman for me; if I wanted to have kids with anyone, it would be with her. I knew we had something unique and I thought, ‘I’m not prepared to give it up.’

“When we saw each other we’d have a day of awkwardness because we hadn’t been together for so long, sometimes up to eight weeks. Leaving each other at the airport was the hardest. When Lindi came to visit me in Australia, I learned it was far harder to be the one to stay behind. “It was always my dream to be a pilot, but once I’d got there, I thought about giving it up for Lindi. Life is about more than your job; you’ve got to have someone to share the adventure with you. In the end, Lindi was the one who made the enormous sacrifice.

“When Lindi announced she had resigned from South African Airways, it blew me away; there was a fear of what was going to happen, because it was such a huge change. When I looked at her face, I could see she was scared by my reaction. I then realised what it had taken for her to get to that point.

“We finally had direction after six years of heartbreaking phone calls. I’d asked her to marry me before and she had said ‘yes’, but then ‘no’. She didn’t want to get engaged before she had made the decision on her own to resign. “I asked her to marry me again, on the edge of a ravine. I told her she was going over if she said no! We married at a game park called Thula-Thula, (which means ‘quietly, quietly’) with 12 Aussie and about 100 South African guests.
“I knew it was hard for her to move to Australia. She loves it here, but I always had a fear that I was taking a fish out of water because Africa is in her soul. I still have that fear now.”

Words: Eva-Maria Bobbert. Photography: Sam Mc Adam. Hair & make-up: Desire Wise