30^th November (Wednesday)

We had a morning flight to catch out of Ayers Rock on our way to Alice Springs and then onto Melbourne to stay with my cousin.  Ayers Rock is a very small airport and has a crazy arrangement in that the café doesn’t open until 9:30am even though the place was full of passengers well before 9am waiting to catch the 9:50am plane to Alice Springs.

For the second time we were commandeered by Qantas staff to handle the emergency door on the flight. One odd thing is that they insist on presenting the emergency life jacket drill even though there is no ocean within a few thousand miles or any significant billabongs.

From the air the land looks greener than one might imagine, with a few dried up river beds, but also in places signs of water and what look like salt beds showing that at some stage in its history it had all been covered by sea water.

Vicinity of Ayers Rock from the air

The flight out of Alice Springs into Melbourne was late and by the time we arrived in Melbourne we were an hour behind schedule. Normally this wouldn’t have mattered too much but we were planning on meet up with my Australian/NZ cousins at a restaurant ahead of seeing the “Kinky Boots Musical” at Her Majesty’s Theatre at 7:30pm.

We picked up a hire car and headed into the Melbourne traffic, which was building up as people left work. Fortunately my cousin’s husband had booked us a place at a car park near the restaurant, which saved some valuable time. We eventually arrived at the restaurant at 6:20pm resulting in a fairly swiftly eaten meal.

Mike & the girls gather before the show

The show, based on a true story, in which a drag queen saves a struggling shoe factory with a line of footwear that resembles “two and a half feet of tubular, irresistible sex’’ is brilliant and well worth watching. Sheila and I had previously seen it on film in the UK but nevertheless enjoyed every minute of the musical with its very punchy performance.