We went out to a viewing point near the rock one evening at sunset. It was extremely touristy, and there were people nearby drinking champagne, which I thought was a bit over the top. But the sunset was more impressive than I thought it would be, with the rock turning some remarkable colours as the shadow of the Earth crept up on it.

We didn’t even know helicopter flights were an option here before we arrived, but when we found out we could do them, we didn’t hesitate. It was a spectacular fifteen minutes – we flew high over the rock, and it was the best possible way to appreciate what an astonishing place we were in. Everything was flat, red and barren, and the only things in the whole landscape that stood out were Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

We spent a few days in Adelaide staying with relatives. I had a terrifyingly close encounter with a huntsman spider while we were there, which left me on edge for days afterwards. A day out touring South Australian vineyards helped me to relax again, as did wandering along the shores of the Southern Ocean at Hallett Cove, watching porpoises swimming just off shore. After that, we set off on another epic journey, this time by bus to Yulara, a couple of miles from Uluru. “Don’t worry if you feel a sudden huge thump in the middle of the night”, said the driver as we pulled out of Glendambo at nightfall. “That’ll just be us hitting a kangaroo”. We passed through the Woomera Prohibited Area during the night, and at 6am we found ourselves in Yulara. It was freezing cold, and frost glittered in the morning sun. Later that day, we walked out to a viewpoint near the town. All around was flat, the horizon never-ending, except for the solitary form of the famous bright red rock. It’s such a famous object that it’s almost hard to believe it’s actually real, but there it was.

To get from Perth to Adelaide we took the train. Not just any old train, though – this is one of the great train journeys, taking nearly two days to cross the fearsomely empty expanse of the Nullarbor Plain. We rumbled out of East Perth station in the early afternoon, and until nightfall we wound our way through some fairly green countryside. At 11pm we arrived in Kalgoorlie, and in the morning we were deep into the desert. The line was a single track, and so the train would occasionally stop in the middle of nowhere to let something else pass. An announcement was made that getting off the train at any point like this would be a seriously bad idea. “If you get left behind”, said the announcer, “you will die.” It was strange to think that I was able to traverse such lethal terrain in a comfortable train. On the second day we travelled along the longest straight stretch of track in the world, three hundred miles without a single bend. It was monotonous enough for me; I wondered how the drivers did it without going insane. I thought we might be able to get up some serious [...]

While we were in Perth we visited the Pinnacles Desert. It doesn’t look far on the map but it takes a good few hours to get there. Our trip started with confusion when we turned up for the bus and said there were six of us booked in with the name Wesson. “Six?” said the driver. “I’ve only got two Wessons on the list”. It turned out he had two Wessons, and another six as well – we were not the only Wessons on the bus. It’s not such a common surname, we got talking to the other Wessons, and they stayed in touch with my mum and dad afterwards. We stopped at a town called Cervantes just before we reached the Pinnacles. On a white sandy beach by the Indian Ocean, we could see a storm approaching, and soon the rain was battering down. It passed quickly and we went on to the Pinnacles. They were an impressive sight. A fossilised forest rises from the yellow sand, covering acres and acres of the desert. Some of the pinnacles are small, some huge, and they all looked amazing under the dark stormy skies.

My dad used to work for BOAC, as it was then, and when he’d left had been given some free standby flights. It was a bit risky trying to go to Australia with them because there was a very good chance we’d be waiting several days before we could get on a flight, and when we went to Heathrow we weren’t sure whether we’d be going to Australia, just as far as Singapore, or back home again that evening. Just 20 minutes before the flight was due to go, someone came up and said “You’re booked on all the way to Perth – go go go!”. We sprinted through the terminal and boarded the plane pretty much at the last possible moment, unable to believe our luck. London to Singapore is a huge long flight but it went very very quickly for me. Thunderstorms lit up the skies over eastern Europe, and as we flew over central Asia we saw Tashkent glowing far below. We got to Singapore at 6am, and it was already 26°C. Soon we were off again, and into the southern hemisphere. Our first stop was beautiful, sunny, laid back Perth. For the first day or so [...]