We departed Sydney on QF575 (a flight code that is no longer in use at the time of writing) at 08:10 Sydney time, arriving in Perth at 11:20 local time. That may sound good, but there is a time difference of 2 or 3 hours depending on season. The aircraft type? Not even a Gold membership laminated with Platinum at one of the flight tracking sites will get that information 11 years after the event as I'm writing this. It may have been a 767 from memory, back when Boeing could be trusted. The return price for two was $940, a bit less than what I paid to go solo in 2024.

From the airport we picked up the rental – a silver Mitsubishi Lancer sedan – which was just a normal thing to do back then but these days the thought of hiring a car is an expensive, bureaucratic pain to be avoided if possible.

From there we drove down to the Aviation Heritage Museum in Bull Creek, south of Perth. After that, it was straight up to our hotel, which was at the time the Best Western Premier Terrace Hotel. Unfortunately Best Western have pretty much pulled out of Western Australia. The hotel itself still sort of exists, but it seems to emphasise that it serves bottomless brunches rather than providing accommodation, and the reviews look dead iffy. But back then, it was a really nice hotel.

Other places that we would be visiting on our trip are also highlighted, but I'll come to them in due course.