While working at Mataranka (see “Northern Territory in a Tassie Tiger” in my blog) I met a bloke by the name of Les Hiddins. The older TV viewers amongst us may remember Les as “The Bush Tucker Man” on an ABC series with the same name. Les was one of the characters who frequented Mataranka and was a source of much bush info and provided entertaining company. At the time, Les been engaged by the ABC to star as Lewis Lassiter in a film about Lassiter’s Lost Gold Reef, that fabled tale of a reef of pure gold that has become part of Aussie folk lore. Part of the film was to be shot at a remote Aboriginal Community about 100 miles west of Alice Springs.

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Sometimes people you hardly know can have a profound effect on your life. It is a mistake to dismiss anybody and an even bigger mistake to hold people in contempt or judge them, no matter what their actions may be or have been, but the degree of human folly and the exasperations of everyday life often make us forget this rule. The Taoists say everything is connected, no events are random and everything we do and all that happens to us is by our own choice. Personally I think they are right.

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Standing in the middle of the Tasmanian Wilderness surrounded by pieces of smashed-up aeroplane, totally reliant on rescue and with a critically injured fellow pilot as a companion is not a lot of fun. It is not the wish of any sane pilot to experience a major crash and any good pilot has a self preservation instinct that will hopefully prevent such an occurrence from happening. It is unfortunate that just prior to this particular crash two highly experienced pilots had lost all sense self preservation and had ignored sane ways to operate a perfectly good aeroplane. It is either fate or pure luck (depending on your philosophy) that I survived this prang unharmed to tell the sad and sorry tale of how it happened.

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Sometimes pilots find themselves living in Paradise. That’s how I felt. In this paradise my day would go something like this: Get up and stroll to a lovely hot thermal spring, have a swim, leave board shorts on and head to a delicious served breakfast. Around 9am, usually still in board shorts and a T-shirt, the next task was to wander up to the airstrip, complete a daily and wait for customers. Customers arrived every day and as the aeroplane in question, a 1938 Tiger Moth only had a single passenger seat, loading them was quick and easy. Following a quick brief and a hand start we were away.

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Gaining a Float Alighting Gear Endorsement can be an enormous amount of fun, greatly improve your flying skills and provide a rewarding career path. Float flying will take you into places inaccessible to normal aeroplanes or even helicopters. Flying on floats merges marine activities into aviation activities. If you’re into “things that float” as well as “things that fly” a float endorsement should be considered as a must do!

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On his around the world flight Dick Smith’s helicopter was shot at somewhere over Greenland. Dick only discovered this fact when a pre-flight inspection the following day revealed several bullet holes. One of the bullets had passed through the cockpit inches from Dick’s head. Could this happen in Australia? Would an Australian shoot at a passing aircraft?

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Being asked to verify a reported aircraft crash is not the greatest thing that can happen while you are flying along in a happy mood. It is even worse when you turn up to the location, discover that the report is true, there has been a crash and the wreckage you are viewing is a plane that you own.

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Last month I was asked to deliver a Cessna 188 Ag Husky from Launceston to West Sale. It was an offer too good to refuse. The Ag Husky is a lovely aircraft to fly, 400 horsepower with a forward view that makes GA passenger planes look sad, an Ag Husky has performance that feels sensational after my humble C172.  This plane has a super solid feel and is built for hard work from rough paddocks. I have never had an Ag rating so the chance to fly this type of aircraft does not come around that often.

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