Seat 1A

The first seat. The very, very first seat! Where they give you fresh orange juice before even taking off, where they greet you by name, where the seat is so big that you can curl up and sleep (if you’re 5’1″ like me), where they feed you more food than you can even fit. Do you know how exciting Qantas Airlines’ Seat 1A is for a girl who was living with geckos for $5 a night two months ago, sleeping in the Bangkok airport a few weeks ago, and sharing an $8 kebab for lunch just last week?

Times like these prove a little planning can go a long way. American Airlines’ credit card gave me bonus miles and I’m using them to fly first class to the Barrier Reef and back!

But I’m also using this luxury to take a moment to acknowledge that the last time I was rewarded with a similar seat on Qantas was when I was exactly half my age and moving from Sydney to London. When we moved to Sydney in 1996, my dad had no idea of the travel addicts he would create, or that I would come back again in ’09 to work and study, and then again in ’14 to work and travel.

I spent the past two weeks helping my previous employer, Art Est Art School, to set up their end of year student exhibit, and to visit all my old favourite places from both childhood and university days:

Lady Macquarie’s Chair