Day 1: departing for our adventure

Well, the day had finally arrived. After 18 months of planning, we were finally all together, with our backpacks on and ready to leave. We were surrounded by friends and family as we slowly said our farewells and had our photograph taken by the local press. And before we knew it, we were walking through the gates at Redbridge tube station and making our way down to the platform.

Leaving Redbridge Station

We then took the train to Ealing Broadway and changed to pick up Heathrow Connect. Once at Heathrow we put our backpacks into their protective bags and made our way to checkin. There Quantas opened up some check in desks for us and it was all a simple painless process. From there we had a special escort to security where we whizzed through the lines to have our hand baggage x-rayed and pass through the metal detectors. As we all were in uniform we stood out quite a bit and soon the staff were chatting to us asking where we were going. A number of us were stopped for a full body search but it didn't take long for us to pass through to airside.

Enjoying TGI's

There we decided to go get some dinner and ended up in TGI Friday's. The waiter was very jealous of our trip and gave us some recommendations of things to do when we are in our various stops. Then it was time to hit the shops! Before long we were queuing to go to our gate and the excitement was building more. We boarded the plane and walked through all the other classes to the back of the big 747 to find a pillow, blanket and goody bag waiting for us. Following a delay in the departure of our plane due to a new double decker Qantas plane with a mechanical fault stuck on the runway (very glad we were not on that plane!) we headed to the runway and were very soon cruising at 42,000 feet.  Dinner and drinks came round (which was interrupted by turbulence on 2 occasions) and then lights out to enable us get as much sleep as possible. Some of us watched films and others tried to sleep. TC woke up with a goody bag on her chest which was quite a shock. We all got one containing water, cookie, mars bar and polos. We all had varying amounts of sleep but overall it was quite a good flight.

On the plane