With the thought of getting up at 3am a good night's sleep was impossible. We both decided to get up at 2.30am no point in waiting for the alarm to go off at 3am. Made sure all necessary power was off and house was secure before our taxi driver Marwick (Mal and Mary’s friend) arrived at 4am to take us to the Perth Domestic Airport. With little traffic on the freeway the drive was very quick to airport.

The Qantas lady at the check-in counter must have had a very bad hair day not a very friendly lady. The wait for the Qantas flight QF 574 didn’t take that long, but we did have a 15 minute wait, which made the start of our journey to Sydney a little late. There was a little air turbulence during the flight but we did manage to get some sleep after we had our breakfast.

With a late arrival and waiting for the transit bus to take us from the Domestic Sydney Airport to the International Airport we were late clearing customs and poor Richard was the one this time to have a body search and not me. QF7 to Dallas airport was also running late an hour behind the scheduled take off time. We had our window seats and a lovely gentleman next to us Peter Cullen who had to put up with us during the 17 hour flight with either of us going to the toilet or walking around the aisle ways for exercise. We both had a light lunch and made sure we watched what we ate during our flight not to be little pigs. Once again we had a bit of air turbulence but managed to get some sleep. There wasn’t a great selection of movies so I fell asleep listening to classical music. The long hours of flying from Perth to Dallas is taking its toll on our poor bodies.

With the strong air turbulence we thought we would never get to having our breakfast we both had a light breakfast before we descended to one man at the Dallas International Airport. The Qantas impasse a 380 had a smooth landing a lot better in the smaller plane we flew into Sydney International airport. As there are a lot of flights coming in and out of the International airport we had to wait on the tarmac before we could dock and leave the plane.

Our new Antler hard cases stood the test and arrived one damaged at the baggage collection point. They were easy to find with Mum’s little crocheted apricot pompoms tied to the handles. Once we had collected our luggage the next step was trying to find the transit train to take us over to the Dallas International Airport, which was on the other side of the domestic airport.

There were quite a lot of people going through customs so it took time and the officers are very thorough with wanting to know which hotel you were staying at how long you were going to be there and what you were doing while in the USA. It was my turn again to be swabbed on my hands for drugs and then go through the x-ray machine to be stand just in case I might be concealing weapons or drugs.