We flew with Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, leaving Melbourne at 2.20 pm. The flight was full. We had reasonable seats, with a window and aisle seat. We were impressed with the service provided by Cathay Pacific. We were served lunch and later a light dinner and throughout the entire nine hour flight the attendants offered drinks etc. Our flight took us over Central Australia from Melbourne to Darwin passing near Uluru and Alice Springs then continued north to Hong Kong. In the past our long haul flights over Australia have either been late at night or in the early hours of the morning and in darkness. It was amazing to see the Australian landscape from the sky and know that we had travelled many of the roads. We could see a large expanse of dry salt lake we could only assume was Lake Eyre where Peter had travelled with a group of friends, and then the huge Simpson Desert which we crossed just two years ago. Two movies each later (sadly "The Longest Ride" which I was keen to see wasn't on offer), lunch and dinner and no sleep, we arrived in Hong Kong where we had a nearly two hour layover. It was good to walk through the airport, then take the fast train between terminals to the departure gate for our London flight. The time went very quickly and soon we boarded our British Airways flight to London on a new A380 aircraft. Interestingly, on our level there were only fourteen rows of economy seats (2 x 4 x 2 seating) with the rest of the plane being business and premium economy seats. The plane had two stories so uncertain of the seating configuration upstairs.