I love a good safety video! No idea how many I have sat through now over the years!  It ius now April and I have sat through the 2016 Qantas video 23 times. It runs for 5min 28 secs so I have spent two hours listening to it! Initially, I was a little dismissive but every time I see it, I am mesmerised. This year, Qantas opted for an enthralling collection of  16 Australian iconic locations introduced by real people to build its safety instructions around:

This year, Qantas opted for an enthralling collection of 16 Australian iconic locations introduced by “real people” to build its safety instructions around:

The scenes in the safety video are:

1. an introduction by a farmer handling a ewe on a sheep station in Tooborac, 100km north of Melbourne (and about 150km from my house) saying: think you have seen it all before, think again”*
2. the aeroplane introduction is done from a hang glider off Stanwell Tops, south of Sydney*
3. The seatbelt demonstration is given by a road train driver in the middle of the outback  near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory*.
4. The oxygen mask demonstration is at Hobart’s MONA (Museum of Old and New Art);*
5. The lifejacket demonstration is at Bondi Beach and undertaken by the Bondi Icebergs*;
6. Brace position is demonstrated as part of a yoga class on Hamilton Island;
7. Counting rows to the exit is done by a couple in the midst of vines at the De Bertoli winery in Melbourne’s Yarra Valley *;
8. Another couple standing in a boat on the Yarra River in my city Melbourne explain about the  lights that guide people to an exit in the case of an emergency whilst the nightly flame display lights up the sky*. Although I have seen another vsrsion of this video which features a light show from Questacon (the Science Museum in Canberra).
9. A young Aboriginal guy explains the escape slides through Aboriginal art imagery in a picture drawn on the soil at the 1,641 square km Deep Well cattle Station in the Northern Territory
10. The emergency slide demonstration is at the Josephine Falls in Queensland*
11. The “No smoking” instructions come from David, whilst smoking trout in a hut at in Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain*
12. A fisherman tells passengers to put their bags under the seat in front of them or in an over-head locker whilst demonstrating this on a boat off Exmouth on the mid western Australian coast*
13. A teenage girl asks everyone to turn their phones to flight mode before take-off as she leaps from a jetty into the River Murray on a rope swing in the town of Purnong, South Australia.
14. We are told to check the seat back safety card by a motorcyclist on Lake Lefroy, a salt lake in Western Australia just south of the Kalgoorlie on the way to Esperance*
15. a young woman lying in a hammock at Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays warns about deep-vein thrombosis. If only Qantas had hammocks and space to move on their A380s, then we might more easily avoid DVT!
16. The final scene features a Qantas flight attendant sitting down with her family for lunch in Fremantle* whilst encouraging passengers to feel welcome and follow the instructions of the crew “at all times”.