Flight to Central Australia

After a few days of cool and wet weather in Sydney, we were looking forward to some warmth. We packed up and headed for the airport on a Saturday morning. With the rushing to pack and hurrying to the airport, we jokingly referred to each of our travel days as “Amazing Race Day”. Those that have seen the show will know what we mean.

Upon entering the domestic terminal, we walked up to one of the Qantas kiosks. When Annette scanned her passport, both of our boarding passes were printed. We gave our bags to the checked luggage folks and that was it. Being used to American airport security I thought it rather strange that no one actually looked at my passport. As a test we did the same thing on all domestic flights. As it turned out I flew from Sydney to Alice Springs to Cairns to Brisbane without showing my passport to anyone.

Flying over the Australian outback, it can be seen why it’s referred to as the Red Centre. The earth is very red and we could see kilometers of swirly lines, presumably from the dust storms of a few weeks before.


We arrived in the town of Alice Springs in Central Australia around noon. Like most small airports, this one does not have jet-ways. We had a nice stroll across the tarmac, down a long path through the bushes and into the terminal. The dry warmth of 40C was a welcome change.


Cute picture of my favorite girl.


Our transportation guy was waiting for us in the terminal. Baggage claim went fast and soon we we were on the road to into town.