{"id":33,"date":"2010-08-05T16:54:56","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T08:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayl.id.au\/?page_id=33"},"modified":"2017-08-16T01:12:30","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T17:12:30","slug":"darwin-1999","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/?page_id=33","title":{"rendered":"Darwin 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday 7th August – Never having been in an aircraft before, we were up bright and early packing the final bits of our luggage and laughing about what to have for breakfast in case we met it again during the flight.\u00a0 Porridge?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Bacon and egg sandwich?\u00a0 Definitely not!\u00a0 We settled on 2 pieces of lightly buttered toast each.<\/p>\n

11:30 am found us arriving at Perth Domestic Airport with our luggage, 2 sons, 2 girlfriends, 2 sets of parents and 1 interstate visitor in tow.\u00a0 We did not expect such a send off for an 8 day holiday,\u00a0 but it was our first time of flying so perhaps they were all there to see if our knees knocked together!\u00a0 We were fine.\u00a0 We had booked Qantas, the airline with the best safety record in the world, so I believe, and felt very happy with our choice.<\/p>\n

David and I checked our luggage in and got our boarding passes.\u00a0 It was very strange to be the ones leaving.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been to the airport so many times, but always to see someone else off, so have come straight out again ourselves.<\/p>\n

Then all of us were scanned for metal objects on the way upstairs, which was a surprise because we\u2019ve never been \u2018done\u2019 at the International Airport.\u00a0 Maybe only the passengers get done there after they\u2019ve said goodbye to those of us seeing them off?<\/p>\n

We went and looked out of the window at the plane next to Gate 2 and admired it.\u00a0 I took my travel sickness tablets as it was now \u00bd hour before boarding, and some photos were taken.<\/p>\n

\"May

May (left) at the airport<\/p><\/div>\n

Then… shock, the nice, reasonably sized plane that we’d been looking at out of the window left, and a smaller one came into its place.\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 Not quite sure what to make of this one and we both felt a little more nervous than we had looking at the large plane..\u00a0 Amie said she liked the little spoiler on the back of this one.\u00a0 Not particularly reassuring.\u00a0 So we took more photos with the real plane in the background.\u00a0 Then for a coffee fix and the strange edginess of waiting for the unknown.<\/p>\n

Finally it was Time and we tried to race off before all the arms grabbed at us.\u00a0 Not a hope!\u00a0 Cuddles all round, a quick wave and we were off down the tunnel to adventure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello\u201d to the hostess – this is so strange.\u00a0 We found our seats and I sat next to the window confidently.\u00a0 The overhead compartment was only inches above my head, and the seat in front closer than I had expected.\u00a0 We were close to the back of the plane, but had only come a very few paces down the aisle from the front.\u00a0 There were 3 seats on our side of the aisle and 2 on the right of it.\u00a0 I kept saying \u201cThis is so small\u201d and apparently David was getting worried as to how I was going to take it all.\u00a0 He thought I was getting claustrophobic although he knows I don\u2019t suffer with that.\u00a0 I was actually just so surprised.\u00a0 I\u2019ve only seen planes on films, and they\u2019re always quite big.\u00a0 In fact they have leg room and the actors can stand up fully.\u00a0 If we stood up we had to hunch over so as not to hit our heads on the overhead compartments – and we are not tall.<\/p>\n

So one hostess checked that we all had our seatbelts on and then one started talking over the PA while number one made a stupid demonstration of what the other was saying.\u00a0 How embarrassing!\u00a0 While this was happening there was a clunk as the little tow-truck thingy hitched on to us and started to push us backwards.\u00a0 A little wave of dread swept over me, but fortunately kept going and was replaced by excitement and curiosity.\u00a0 David said later that he had felt the same way.\u00a0 Soon we started going forward under our own steam and I semi ignored the hostesses so that I wasn\u2019t missing out on my adventure.\u00a0 They then finished and tied themselves down too, and we were taxiing along and then increasing speed.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Faster and faster and being pushed back into our seats.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t tell you the exact moment when we left the ground, but I was looking out of the window and very gently the ground started to fall away.\u00a0 It was a wonderful feeling… to begin with.<\/p>\n

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Saturday 7th August – Never having been in an aircraft before, we were up bright and early packing the final bits of our luggage and laughing about what to have for breakfast in case we met it again during the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-33","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3787,"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions\/3787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mayl.id.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}