Dallas returns

The State Premiers are in town for a high level meeting with the Prime Minister. I picked up one or two from the Hyatt to take for a short ride to The Commonwealth Club, where a dinner was being held in their honour. Just round the corner, really, but you can’t expect such folk to walk.

The Commonwealth Club is one of those exclusive places dating back to Canberra’s earlier days. Its members include the top public servants – Departmental Secretaries, judges, politicians, community leaders, knights of the realm and so on. Personally, I find it rather stuffy and the food bland, but doubtless it is a comfortable home for the cream of Canberran society.

I picked up some locals as well, from a nearby suburb. Three senior members of the legal fraternity, judging by their conversation, which I listened to with one ear open, just in case they issued instructions to the humble driver.

“I won a prize today!” one of them said. “A weekend at any Australian hotel in the Medina chain.”

“Oh, well done! How did you score that?”

“Qantas puts on a shindig each year for its Gold frequent fliers, and they give out door prizes.”

He went on to describe the annual Qantas travel expo, where the airline rents out a convention hall and invites hotel chains, car rental companies and the like to man stalls showcasing their various products. The Commonwealth government has a huge travel and accommodation budget, and the high fliers often have their fingers on the government credit cards.

This was the answer to a question I’d been pondering. I scored an invitation several years ago, when I became a Platinum member of the Qantas club, and since then I’ve attended several of these events. Qantas pays for food and drinks, and there’s always the chance to win one of the door prizes. I’d dropped down to Gold this year, yet I’d still received an invite, and I’d put it down to sloppy book-keeping, but hurried along for the free tucker, a showbag full of glossy brochures and promotional pens, and the general atmosphere of travel and far places.

So. It wasn’t just Wanker Platinums like I’d been, but also Scum Gold like I’d now become.

This year’s theme had been rather bittersweet for me. Texas!

All the Qantas staff wore fluffy plastic ten gallon hats, t-shirts with various Texan themes (including one young lady who filled out her “Route 66″ shirt very nicely, and if I’d had a few of the champagnes on offer, I might have the nerve to ask her to pose for a photograph with me. Sadly, taxidriving is a profession where the allowed blood alcohol level is zero, and so I’d had to watch the trays circulate without me.

There’s always a theme and a game or two – like toss the hoop over the Eiffel Tower to win a bottle of French perfume – and this year they had a mechanical bull, which wasn’t getting a real lot of wear from the public servants making up most of the crowd. Nor from your humble night cabbie, neither, though a few bourbons might have changed my mind. Some of the younger attendees had a go, but I’m far too old and dignified.

I love Texas, and the announcement that Qantas is now flying a direct route from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth was a pleasing one. Not only is Fort Worth one of my very favorite cities, full of atmosphere and style, but the DFW airport is a hub for Qantas’s US partner American Airlines, and it’s a good way to land in the heart of the nation, just one hop away from anywhere.

I’ve visited Dallas twice now, both times making a poignant pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza, but its the sister city of Fort Worth I love most. The Kimbell Art Museum has a gem of a collection and there’s always an interesting travelling exhibition filling the other end of the gallery. The Stockyard District is nicely corny, with a daily longhorn muster, a hokey shoot-out between the campy sheriff and some wildly over the top black hats, and the old stockyards station is home to souvenir shops, Texan eateries, cowboy boutiques and the like, where tourists can happily spend a fortune.

Well worth a visit, by the way, it’s a lot of fun, and I had the best steak of my life late one night at Riscky’s Steakhouse, washed down with a bottle of Lone Star.

The Botanical Gardens are a treat, with a huge rose garden, ornamental lakes with snapping turtles, some grand old trees, and acres of peaceful parkland. The real treasure is the Japanese Gardens, where a small admission fee allows entry to heaven.

Fort Worth distills Texas, in my eyes. Cowtown has the atmosphere, the people and the happy surprise of real art and culture. There’s also various NASCAR and quarter horse and rodeo events, for those less inclined to Mondrian and Mozart.

The sad part of the new Qantas Texan connection is that it comes at the expense of San Francisco, which is, along with Paris, a city I love dearly. When Qantas brought in a direct transpacific flight to San Francisco, I couldn’t stop singing to myself for days. I’ve taken that trip a few times now, and I was on one of the last Qantas jumbos out earlier this year.

I guess that, next time around, I’ll just be forced to fly on Qantas from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth, and catch American Airlines to San Fran.

In previous years, I’ve anxiously scanned the little signs stuck up on the exhibition booths. Most of them display details of a freebie night or car hire or something for the bearer of a lucky door ticket, and I’ve always missed out, though I’ve done well for little giveaways of pens and notepads and mints and once even an airliner model.

This time I spotted my number! Woot! A night away in a resort in Perth. Airfare not included. I like Perth, and this would be a great excuse to visit, but I’m saving up my pennies for other things, not least a new house, and instead I’ll send the voucher to a Perth friend, who can treat herself to a free night in a luxury hotel and clean out all the fancy toiletries.

So that was nice. I enjoy these Qantas junkets, with the endless coffee and the light lunch that I go round again for a second serve and the pastries and the pens and the brochures. They might be enticing me to spend up big on travel but, apart from my annual round the world trip or the five weeks I spent doing the Route 66 thing in April, I am unmoved by blatant advertising ploys.

“…and you know what?” my dinner-suited lawyer passenger in the back seat continued to his colleagues, “The place was absolutely full of these jumped-up public servants! They fly all over the place on government tickets and get Gold cards.”

His friends tut-tutted. The elite flying levels are intended for the true elites. The judges, department heads, vice-chancellors and so on who tuck into lamb chops, three veg and sticky date pudding at the Commonwealth Club. The lower classes might dream of Bronze status from the crowded rows at the back of the plane, but it’s the true gold members of society who deserve the perks and the champagne.

We pulled up at the clubhouse portico, and the lawyer beside me paid the fare with a government card.

“Tell your mate,” I whispered to him, “that I didn’t see him on the mechanical bull.”

–Skyring