04.04.2019 # Perth to Alice Springs, a little excitement before departure

When checking in for Qantas flights, unless flying business, you only deal with machines. After weighing your luggage on one of the numerous scales to check for excess weight, you print your own boarding passes and baggage labels. Then you just put your bags on the conveyor belt and you're done. It actually works great and saves you from standing in line at the counter.

At security, my reel bag is once again held back. This is not new to me and I don't worry about it. There's nothing dangerous inside and so far I have safely made it through everywhere with the same contents. Until now. The friendly officer who takes care of me makes it clear that something is bothering him. At first, I don't understand what he means until he points to my reel and says that it is prohibited in hand luggage. That's news to me. He's probably afraid that I will go amok with the approximately 15m of line on the plane.

After a short but futile discussion, I am sent to a counter with the bag, to check in the naughty part as baggage. I wonder how that's going to work. The employee at the counter says that I can't possibly check in the reel separately, so I have no choice but to check in the entire reel bag (this way you can easily check in more than 23kg J ) I'm not completely comfortable with that though. The bag is not locked and the contents are somewhat valuable. Luckily, nothing can break at least, the two sensitive parts are well protected. Nevertheless, the whole time during the two flights, I have the uneasy feeling that I will never see my regulator again because the small bag will be overlooked during unloading and then spend its existence shuttling around Australia.

We arrive in Melbourne on time at 5.20 am and can take our time. We have a whole four hours to kill until the flight to Alice Springs. By the way, it's already 3 hours later here, thanks to the time difference. After finding a terminal where you're not shock-frozen by the air conditioning, we make ourselves at home. Despite the early hour, several stands are already open and we don't have to suffer from hunger or thirst. We spend the time writing in our diaries, eating, drinking, and playing ukulele. After all, we didn't have time for practice yesterday.

Finally, at 9.25 am, we continue towards the red center. The plane is almost fully booked, so we sit quite cramped for the next two and a half hours. By now, we have been up for over 24 hours and have trouble keeping our eyes open. Between the occasional nap, thanks to the window seat, I notice how the landscape below is constantly changing. shortly before landing, you can really only see a rusty red steppe, as you know from television. So this is the red center.

After landing in Alice Springs, we set our clocks back half an hour. That can really confuse you with the time. While it was still a bit chilly in Melbourne in the morning, we are greeted here by a blazing desert heat. We will be glad when we get out of our long clothes.

At the baggage carousel, a big surprise awaits me. Despite all my fears, my reel bag has arrived safely and the contents are at least externally undamaged. I am so relieved and mentally apologize to Qantas and all the baggage distribution staff. There are regular shuttle buses from the airport to the city. But since we don't want to wait until the next bus is full and a taxi costs only slightly more, we decide on the latter. After about 20 minutes, we arrive at 'Jump Inn Alice Budget', where we check in for one night. Unfortunately, the rooms are not ready yet, so we sleepily doze off in the lounge area for a good two hours. At least there's WiFi and something to drink.

After finally checking into our rooms, we immediately make our way to Apollo car rental. We had already booked an all-wheel-drive camper in advance from bestcamper.de from Germany. The handover is quite quick, even though we have a hard time understanding the guy at the counter. There's not much paperwork, everything is done with a tablet. This has the consequence, among other things, that the three signatures I have to make don't even remotely resemble each other. Well, never mind, in case of doubt it wasn't me.

After a short detour to the village because we need a permit for a certain section of the route, we immediately head back to the hostel. We actually wanted to buy everything we would need for the next 5 days, but we decide against it. The car will be parked on the street overnight and we don't want to tempt anyone. We had read a lot about Alice and its crime rate, so it seemed safer to us. Especially since the stores are all open early and we can easily do the shopping before departure.

To end the day, we treat ourselves to a light snack and a nightcap before falling into bed before 8:00 pm. After all, it was a long ride to get here and we haven't really slept since Yallingup.