A Cross-Continental Romance Amid the 9/11 Aftermath

The narrator recounts meeting Australian academic Justine at a literary award ceremony in New York, where they discovered shared interests in science-fiction authors and quirky food preferences. After a brief period of separate dating, they spent Justine’s final week in the city together. In early September 2001, the narrator traveled to Sydney to visit her, only to learn of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States later that month. The two then boarded a flight scheduled for September 13, 2001 to Melbourne, a journey marked by unusually somber staff, a turbulent stretch over the Indian Ocean, and the feeling that passenger jets had become “weapons of war.” While the flight proceeded, the pair held hands, exchanged a calm declaration of love, and navigated the uncertainty of international travel in the immediate post-attack period.

The Guardian

The attacks in early September 2001 caused global air-travel disruptions, overloaded phone circuits, and a pervasive sense of danger. The narrator describes how, despite the heightened tension, airlines continued operating and the couple’s flight proceeded as planned. Their experience reflects the broader atmosphere of “tempting fate” that many travelers felt when boarding planes in the days following the attacks.

The Guardian

After returning to New York in November 2001, Justine visited the narrator’s parents, and the couple eloped upstate without informing friends. They have remained together since, eventually marrying and co-authoring a novel, *The Mortons*, released by Penguin. The book is listed at $AU34.99.

The Guardian

The account is presented as a personal memoir published in a lifestyle column, meaning the details are the writer’s recollections rather than independently verified facts. Consequently, the story offers an intimate view of how a global crisis intersected with a budding romance, illustrating how individuals found personal certainty amid collective upheaval.

The Guardian