COMING from England, I kind of expect everywhere else to be big. I read a lot about Australia, its land mass, sparse population and inhospitable interior before I arrived but I thought I knew what big meant.

Africa is big, but that part that I have seen, South Africa, holds nothing of the forbidding emptiness of Australia. South Africa was impressive, cloud topped mountains and huge tracts of neat, green and brown farmland. Australia looked like a beach on steroids.

Personally, flying spooks me and I never ask for window seats. This time though, a window seat it was. As the massive aircraft lumbered down the runway, eventually poking it's nose into the clear blue sky and making the unlikely leap from the ground, I was forced to watch Sydney, the most comely city I have ever seen disappear below us.

Once my heart rate slowed from that special, flirting around the edge of cardiac arrest, territory normally the domain of but a few poor flyers and an awful lot of lab rats, I started to pay attention.

An hour or so out of Sydney I started wondering where the next town or city would be. A crystal clear sky meant I was able to pick out even minor roads and I was expecting farms or ocean.

The flight information helpfully filled the gap in my knowledge and the answer was Alice Springs. There were roads, the odd building but very few signs of human habitation and mile after mile of remote, forbidding stretches of dusty brown hills and plains. No greenery, no water, no cars on the red strip of arrow straight tracks: just nothing.

To fly from the South Coast of Britain to the North Coast, up in Scotland, would take in the region of two hours. It was more than two and a half hours before I spied what I presumed was Alice Springs: ''wow'' I thought, ''wonder how much more of Australia there is?'' And set to watching out for the coast.

I never found out. What I got, another two hours further on was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. Even the cabin crew stopped and stared.

As the sun slunk away to warm the other side of the planet, the deserted red and brown moonscape far below slowly lit up in a brilliant soft red glow, which was chased slowly and remorselessly away by the inky black of the night that would accompany us on the rest of our trip to Bangkok.

Of course, with nothing to look at, I had nothing to do but think. Then the turbulence returned, then I set to worrying about the technology that enabled the driver of the 200 tons of metal that I was sat at the back of to park on a strip of tarmac barely wider than us, and lab rats and I once more had something in common, a condition which would be my companion for the remainder of the flight.

Ends

Word Count: 500
E-Mail: steve@s-p-f.net