Quite a few months ago, before we decided to sell our house and move to a smaller property, Peter and I booked a short holiday to Alice Springs and Uluru. It had been many years – in the last century – since we’d been there and that had been with FILM cameras. Positively archaic. The months went by, we decided to sell – and then we were reminded that in the middle of the chaos of selling, buying, and moving, we were booked for a holiday.
As it turned out, it was a lovely break, just what we needed at what had become a difficult time for many reasons.
Although it’s only a shortish flight – a little under 3 hours – we’d decided to splurge and pay a little extra for business class fares. The holiday company Imagine had originally booked us to fly from Brisbane to Adelaide, and from there to Alice Springs on Virgin but that flight was apparently cancelled, so Imagine got us a flight on the previous day and paid for us to stay a day early in Alice Springs at the company’s expense. (Great customer service)
It had been many years since we last flew with Virgin. If I remember rightly, flights were delayed all over the country and we ended up getting to our home in Victoria well after midnight instead of mid-afternoon. We were not impressed.
This trip was completely different. We arrived with our luggage at check-in, the attendant printed off our boarding passes and sent off our bags. Then she directed us to the airline’s lounge. We’d expected to go through the usual conga line to go through security – but Virgin had security at the entrance to the lounge. No queues, no drama. Ten out of ten.
The lounge itself is large and spacious, offering hot food as well as fruit, pastries and the like. You could get hot drinks from the coffee and tea machines but they also offered handmade, barista coffee. There was a short wait but it was worth it.
And they announced flights.
There were only two rows of business class seats (eight people) and we were well looked after. Nick, our attendant and the purser on the flight, allowed us to choose when we wanted to eat lunch and prepared each meal individually, so it arrived hot and fresh. Like most airlines these days, the entertainment system had to be accessed via your own device (phone or tablet). It wasn’t working but I had a book to read.
Flying over Australia is so very different to flying over Europe. There are few roads or marked paddocks out there in the middle, let alone towns. It looks exactly like it once was, a very shallow sea, sometimes punctuated by a wide, meandering river, not always completely dry as it has rained out there lately. In places salt lakes appeared, shining like silver.
Landing in Alice we had about the only hiccup in the whole trip. We were supposed to be met by a limo driver who would take us to our hotel. I was ringing the company when the driver appeared with his sign. The flight had arrived a little early. We weren’t too impressed with his limo, a decrepit looking 2015 Statesman, or his service. However the Crowne Plaza was fine, incorporating Lasseter’s Casino for what that’s worth.
We’d been to Lasseter’s before.
On our first visit to Alice Springs we went on the Ghan train, then visited Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We returned to the Alice to catch a plane over to Perth, where we stayed for a week or so before catching the Indian-Pacific train back home. That was the plan. But the plane to Perth went out of service in Darwin and we were forced to kick our heels in Alice Springs for about ten hours. As it happened, after a very long dry spell that even had the hardy desert oaks shutting down, on the day we got back to the town, the rains had arrived, persistent drizzle that made any outdoor activity unpleasant. Besides, we didn’t know when the plane would be ready.
So, we went to the casino and played the one cent poker machines. We both got lucky but Pete won something like $1,200. That helped pay for a magnificent piece of aboriginal art.
The plane finally arrived from Darwin and we boarded in the late afternoon. As it happens, the flight to Perth goes over Uluru, 450km away. We reached the Rock not long before sunset and the blanket of cloud that had obscured the sun all day parted, giving us an incredible view of Uluru bathed in red light. The pilot flew around the monolith twice so that everyone on the aircraft could enjoy that once in a million sight.
Back to 2024. We spent twenty bucks on the pokies and had pub grub for dinner. Tomorrow the tour would start properly.
This is the first post for this trip. If you missed anything, pick up the whole journey here.
Oh – and just a polite reminder – Pets in Space 9, an anthology of science fiction romance, is available for preorder. Apart from having ten brand new stories to read, your purchase will help Hero Dogs, an organization which provides assistance dogs to veterans in the US.
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