A Quick Trip to Queensland: day 1, departure

For no reason at all folks, what's the date? December 25th, it's Christmas! What, so they both fall on the same day? Must be slippery!

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. My name's Clippy and I'll be your compere for this holiday blog.

So I guess you're all wondering where we are. Well look around you - airliners, overpriced coffee, crying babies, and banks upon banks of uncomfortable seating. Yes folks, we are in an AIRPORT!

To be quite exact we're in the brand new Terminal 4 at Tullamarine. It's very nice - lots of windows for looking at planes from, power points at every seat in the eating areas, and drinking fountains that have vertical taps for filling water bottles. Considering it's the "el cheapo" end of Tullamarine, serving Jetstar and Tigerair, I'm quite happy with it. A High Speed Rail station underneath is the only thing that could improve it.

So we're flying with Deathstar, and our A320 is just outside the window waiting for us. Narrowbody jets look so tiny after all the 777s we've been on before! The cafe next to the terminal has a huge mural of a Douglas A-26 Invader (the 1944-45 version with the eight guns in the nose, can't remember which version it is), and the radial engines on the wall look bigger than the whole fuselage of the Airbus.

We used the self-service check in to drop off our hold luggage. It's quite a painless process, just press a few buttons, scan a few barcodes and you get your luggage ID sticker. Stick it on, drop it on the conveyor belt and you're done. And there's people around to help if you need it.

Then we went through the usual x-ray (they took a good hard look as I went through - all the phone chargers etc were packed in the front pocket and it lit up like a Christmas tree) and then tramped through the endless corridors to our gate. Since this is the budget end of the airport we didn't have to thread our way through duty free alcohol and jewellery shops, which was an unexpected bonus.

Our flight has just come up on the departure board so I'm going to sign off and have a short snooze until Midga lets me know we're at altitude and I'm allowed out. Talk soon!