Travels With My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road. Christine Osborne

I recognised Dishdaba. The behemoth was built at the end of the vast bay where we had slept on the beach, and the desert hinterland where we’d walked for our lives that summer, was now covered in hollow-eyed construction sites. As I stood there reminiscing, a water-skier streaked across the water where we dived all those years ago and suddenly I missed my old companions: Morris was probably a wealthy doctor practising in Alexandria, and Raouf could well be on the Supreme Court bench in Cairo. I was lost in thought, when four women emerged from a swim, and snapping out of it, I asked could I take their photograph.

      ‘Where are you from?’ I addressed them in a friendly fashion.

      ‘Russe,’ replied the largest woman while drying herself with a yellow beach towel.

      ‘What you doing here?’ she asked, since clutching my spiral notebook, I was clearly not on holiday.

      RUSSIAN HOLIDAYMAKERS AT THE PYRAMISA HOTEL DISHDABA, 2010

      ‘I came here forty-four years ago,’ I said, feeling rather strange.

      ‘You from where?’ she asked.

      ‘Sydney,’ I replied.

      ‘Australia is nice?’ She shook her wet hair like a dog after a bath. ‘Yes, you should go there.’ I smiled.

      ‘Are many Russe in Australia?’ She was becoming interested.

      ‘No, but they seem to be everywhere else,’ I muttered, though uncertain if she appreciated the joke.

      Dear old Dishdaba. The Pyramisa Hotel was even larger than Cheops pyramid, and I learnt that the Sahl Hasheesh Resort would eventually have ten hotels, with banks and boutiques along the 12.5 kilometres (7.5 miles) corniche planted with hibiscus shrubs and baby date-palms. Counting an ‘old town’ médina, a marina, four golf courses and villa-type housing for a projected population of 200,000, it was billed as the biggest, splashiest resort in the Middle East, but I wouldn’t be buying there: the Dishdaba from our young, free-spirited days had been laid to rest.