Daniele Somenzi in Australia with the Graziella

A Tour of Australia with Ansett. (1994) On this trip I am alone. I leave with British Airways and arrive in Melbourne, departing from Pisa via London. During the flight from Bangkok to Melbourne I spent a couple of hours in the cockpit talking with the pilots, at which point they invited me to come back for the landing; naturally I said yes, a shame I couldn't film, it was still dark, and from my seat behind the 2 pilots I was able to enjoy all their manoeuvres for the landing. It was the second time I had witnessed a landing in the cockpit; the big Boeing 747 touched down and I, overjoyed, then thanked the pilots. As usual I had brought my folding Graziella bike from Italy. So after assembling it, I pedalled for 3 km, the distance separating the airport from the house of my friend Giuseppe, where I stayed a couple of days.

To cut a long story short, with an Ansett pass I then flew to the Gold Coast, landing at OOL Coolangatta, to pedal there too for a few days, hosted by Paola and Roberto, my former bosses at the restaurant where I worked as a waiter in '96/'97. And again, an Ansett flight, from Brisbane to Cairns, and after a few days of pedalling I continue to Darwin. I had made this tour to visit the hotels and make contacts, to then bring possible groups from Italy. After Darwin, a flight, with a stopover at Alice Springs, to Adelaide and then on to Canberra, from where I then rented a car and, passing through the Blue Mountains, a spectacle I was seeing for the first time, I arrived in Sydney. I then left my Graziella in the airport car parks; who knows who later made use of it, I hope someone who needed it.. A British flight back to Europe and bye bye