After a pretty bad show from the Virgin blue airline and around 12 hours from airport to airport we finally made it from Cairns to Perth.

Being a no frills airline we didn't have too many expectations to start with but we were both taken a back when we got on the first of our two connecting flights and found that even tho we were flying for 4hrs over the lunchtime period the plane barely had enough food on board to serve the first few rows, let alone the rest of us!

After a four hour layover in Melbourne, during which time we thought best to have lunch and dinner! We got on our connecting flight only to hear the cabin crew announcing the same problem had occurred with their food supplies as had happened earlier. Fortunately this time it didn't make much difference to us but as we refused to spend any money while sat on the plane we were left twiddling our thumbs for the duration of both flights as the TV system was 100% pay per view! Nice one Branston!

Enough moaning tho, Perth turned out to be well worth the hassle and is definitely one of our favourite places in Australia.

Our initial reason for heading over to Perth was to watch the Red Bull Air Race. Jean bought the tickets for my birthday a while back and it turned out to be an event worth waiting to see. It was a two day event but we made it into a three day one as we went to watch the training the day before the qualifying started. The Perth course is nicely laid out so you can get a really good view of the event even without a ticket.. We took full advantage of this on the qualifying day, watching the planes take off and land from one side of the river and then watching the race up close on the final day from the grandstand.

The day was made even better as, despite being on the other side of the world, the final round was between two British pilots! The whole championship happened to be rounded off on that day and unfortunately Britain's best only manage second overall, least we saw him on the podium!

We stayed in Perth for ten days and had considered doing a few day trips up the west coast but to stand a chance of seeing the best the west coast has to offer we would really have needed to take a couple of days going from place to place. Seeing as we had only just finished travelling up the east coast we decided it would be nice to feel settled for a short while and instead opted just to relax and take in whatever sights Perth had to offer.

NEXT STOP: Melbourne