Uluru Airport is a mini-airport to rival most other mini-airports. There are two gates that seem to be operational and they both go out through the same door!
As you can imagine the security line is pretty short – the only people going through it are 98% definite to be the same people who will be on your flight. There were very, very few people anxious to get to Alice Springs on QF1940! Maybe about 12-15 total.
I met a charming duo of friends from Cornwall (one from lovely Launceston near where Jo Colwill runs Cowslip Quilts – one of my favourite places on Earth). We had good banter until the flight was called.
This was a QantasLink flight – the difference being the plane type was a little tighter and there was no service on such a short flight (less than 40 minutes) beyond a little bottle of water.
As you can see, I was far from the first one onboard and there only two people seated behind me at this stage!
At the time I took that pic, I had seen so much red sand or earth that I wondered if I was mad taking another picture of it. But as I write this (a week or so later in Perth), the red earth is a lovely memory and very unusual compared to my own Norn Irn soil of deep brown or black.
Alice Springs Airport – also small by international standards – seemed enormous after the teeniness of Uluru! And shops!! This all seemed very shiny and clean.
The bags took just a moment or two to come through and it was out to the land of the relentless flies, the taxi queue, to spray on some utterly non-functioning insecgt repellent. Apparently it doesn’t work with Outback Flies.