The Sun-Herald

Welcome to the flying kangaroo's first-class disco

IT'S confusing. There are bars that look like airports, and airports that look like bars, and if you're not careful you can end up in Ulaan Batar when you only meant to have a glass of semillon. In this city, you just have to roll with it.

And so we took our passports, went to the departures hall and checked in at gate D, where a phalanx of beaming, gleaming Qantas staff greeted us.
In the true spirit of "musn't grumble", the airline was putting a brave face on its business turbulence and throwing a lavish party for its new first-class lounge.
"You're going to love it," said the check-in lady. I suspected so. With interior by Marc Newson, the industrial design legend (not a "stylist", as reported elsewhere), a spa, library and 48-seat open-kitchen restaurant, this new hangout for the airline's wealthiest cargo is rumoured to have cost $20 million.
While I waited to board the party, I perched on an Italian Poltrona Frau armchair. "You're the first person to sit on that," said another proud staffer. "Make a wish." I was going to wish that next time I fly Qantas the in-flight entertainment system works properly, but that's mean spirited, so I went for world peace instead.
Escorts ushered us through security to airside and past the duty-free booze. "No," they said, before I even opened my mouth.
And then suddenly we were in an airy, beautiful, marble-floored space with forests for walls and a 180-degree view of Sydney. A Collette Dinnigan fashion show of things you'd never wear on planes was in full flow, and Sydney's finest were lolling among American oak sculptures, wool carpets and leather tiles. Waiters bore champagne. Newson himself was at large with Charlotte Stockdale at his side, and Kieren Perkins and Steve Waugh were nibbling offerings from Qantas chef Neil Ponytail Perry.
We admired the cute touches, such as the lounge's air-conditioning ducts, which are giant-sized versions of the little ones above aircraft seats.
(I'd have gone further with that theme and had enormous lemon-scented moist towelettes for rugs, giant sickbags for curtains and a statue of Ralph Fiennes, which is why Newson is a famous designer and I am not.)
"Those wine bottles," I told Sotheby's boss Justin Miller knowledgeably, "are larger versions of the miniature ones you get with your in-flight meal." But he was looking at things aesthetes appreciate, such as the spa's marble showers and Swiss quartzite walls and the real live undergrowth on the walls, which is in fact 8400 plants assembled vertically by celebrity botanist Patrick Blanc. There is no John Travolta Suite.
It's odd to think that no one will stay in this swish spot all evening long. It's a stop-off, not a destination.
Perhaps it's time for Qantas to forget that silly flying business and concentrate on nightclubs instead.