As I drag out my winter boots, gloves, hat and parka to transform myself once again into Marnook of The North, it's hard to believe that about a month ago I was still Marn, Queen of the Desert.

Yes, you heard me. Just wipe that Priscilla business right out of your mind. That so-called Queen of the Desert was nothing but a bus while *I* am flesh and blood AND I have ridden a camel not once, but twice.

Oh, be quiet.

You know, I'd never seen desert before Australia, so what I was expecting was what I've seen in countless movies--endless dunes of pure white sand stretching as far as the eye can see with the odd oasis for wacky, palm tree based comic relief.

Yes, I am a hick.

For that matter, I kind of figured beaches were white, too, because white sand is all I've ever seen. So when I saw the bright orange sand at Denham and the peach coloured sand at nearby Monkey Mia where the dolphins are, I finally realized eggzackly how Dorothy felt when she and Toto stepped out of her black and white Kansas past and walked into the technicolour of Oz.

So when the spousal unit and I drove into The Pinnacles National Park not far from Cervantes on the same west coast we figured we had a handle on how Oz looked.

Um, guess again. Can you say "mellow yellow" boys and girls? Of course you can!

The Pinnacles were formed by the same forces that shaped Uluru, the famous red mesa out in the middle of Australia. Because the rocks were so much smaller than Uluru, though, it was as if we were in some sort of huge petrified forest. All around us were all these oddly shaped bits of rock poking out of bright yellow sand as far as you could see, all the way to the ocean.

It was so desolate, so silent, so indescribably beautiful. It felt as if we had stepped on to another planet, in a way. And unlike almost all the other touristy places we visited in Oz, we were almost alone for the hours we spent wandering through it.

I think we might have seen one or two other cars in the distance.

This would be the last time we would have a beautiful landscape to ourselves for a long time. And right after this I would begin to pay for all the mistakes I'd made in planning the trip.

The biggest was the decision to fly all the way to Perth. It was to take 36 hours from the moment I closed the door to our log home to when I opened the door to our hotel room in Perth. I thought we would be able to sleep on the planes, but we only catnapped. It left us both exhausted on top of being insanely jetlagged. And being run down and all, I got sick with a cold I couldn't shake.

I remembered vaguely that it wasn't a good idea to get on a plane if you have a head cold, but I couldn't remember why. When we got back to Perth the next day and on the plane that would take us to Alice Springs in the middle of Australia, I quickly found out why.

I'll drop the scientific jargon and explain it in layman's terms. See, when a plane rises, and later when it lands, the pressure shifts in the cabin. If you're healthy, all you get is the odd popping in your ears. BUT, if your sinuses are plugged, teensy elves carrying ice picks slip down from the luggage compartments and stab your eardrums repeatedly.

I know.

They did it to me, eh.

I got off the plane in Alice in a world of pain, completely deaf in my right ear and with an extremely loud buzzing in my left.

The spousal unit, not a happy flier at the best of times, had white knuckled it through the major turbulence we had in the last half hour of the flight while descending. He got off the plane so nauseous that he proved once and for all that Procol Harem was right, and it is indeed possible to become a whiter shade of pale.

You might think that things couldn't get worse.

You might, but then, you would be wrong.