September 22, Day 1 Toowoomba - Walgett

September 22, Day 1 Toowoomba - Walgett

 Woke with the first flush of daylight and quickly added another flush of my own. It was 5:15 and the first job of the day was done. We had a key to the aeroclub and so after a quick bowl of porridge Dustin and I decamped with the bags to unshackle the old girl and let her loose. The girls would join us later. Arranged for the aeroclub to put her nose against the door so we could pull her straight out. In the end we only had to pull 4 planes to get to our machine. The old aeroclub really has gone to the dogs since Barren Wuckley hit his head on Mt Warren in a fit of aerobatics and became Fuhrer. Not to worry we were up for the exercise and so we huffed and puffed and pulled the planes out.

We were fueled, packed and ready to go when Andrew finally taxied up in a shiny new RCN. All of a sudden she has this electric green sixties thing going on and it was different. I suggested to Andrew that he fly it wearing a long white wig and some love beads. But in the end he turned out to be not that kind of guy. Who'd a thunk it? Not long after Anthony turned up in ISB and we moved the aircraft to the hardstand for team - sorry - community photographs. Bill & Helen came along to wish us well and see us off and we'd have stuffed them both in the luggage bay if they had let us. Love you Bill and Helen.

Then we were off in familiar order: RCN, ISB and JCU. Blast off at 0845 for Walgett tracking to overfly Goondiwindi, where my parents were married many years ago, and Collarenebri. Took a while to unstick JCU as we had a full load of fuel, four people and bags crammed full of a male and female representative of every animal on the planet (excepting Joe Hockey of course). As we climbed out we could see ISB clearly but soon after it was lost it in the haze: doo dooo do do, dooo dooo do do! It was smooth air but not really a great seeing day though it slowly got better as we ran down the front runners and took up a point position. Spread before us was the wide brown land and a bloody big sky.  Yee-hah!: we were on the road again.

A 20 knot headwind saw us stay a little lower than the others who climbed up to 8500 looking for better groundspeed. That gave us a brief sight of RCN high above us and about a half mile to the north as we slipped past. Other than that it was blue skies and the rolling downs with familiar voices on the numbers saying: 'what's your groundspeed Andrew?' and 'Anthony how far have you got to run?' and 'Hey guys how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?' We sometimes wax philosophical in the big empty spaces of the wide blue . 'Dunno ... how big is the pin?,' says Andrew.

Flying time to Walgett 2.4 hours. Landing at time 1050, followed soon after by the Cherokee and after that Nat and Andrew in the Emerald Hippie.