From an interesting so-what-else-is-new article about the depressed Detroit housing market:
“Once we’ve seen the last person leave Michigan, then I think we’ll be able to say we’ve seen the bottom,” [Realtor Ron Walraven] said.
I eagerly await that glorious day, when we can begin the repopulation of Michigan with true American heroes: Ohioans.
DST ended in Australia this weekend; with luck, it will still be on the books in WA come December.
Perth is a bit of an odd city, and Western Australia an odd state; nowhere has this been more apparent than in the daylight saving debate. I already wrote about how parliament botched the introduction of DST, and it’s been nothing but media-stirred controversy the entire time I’ve been here.
Virtually every TV news program, it seems, commissions polls and canvasses the city looking for the most outspoken anti-DST crusaders who bemoan … what? That it’s too bright during dinner? Nobody has really explained to me why they want the sun to set at 19h. And frankly, only extremists with too much time on their hands are going to respond to $1/txt SMS polls. That this issue can even sustain a three-month news cycle boggles the mind.
Get a load of this tripe. People seriously claim that there will be more underage drunk driving because it stays light out until 8? I didn’t realize that early evening was when Perth kids like to “kick it.” Or that daylight saving would raise average temperatures. I particularly like the writer who can’t bear to spend an extra hour (aside: what extra hour?) with the kids. That must be rough for them.
It was quite a while before I met an actual human opposed to DST, but I did eventually, and the best reason they could come up with was that before daylight saving they didn’t need to put sunscreen on their kids after school. I don’t really buy this, since the UV index is so high in Perth that you can get sunburned by moonlight. Experts recommend a class 9, or Robin Williams, level of hair coverage.
At long last, I heard a reason that stands up to some degree of scrutiny: apparently, early summer mornings in WA generally have better beach conditions. According to the Perth Surf Life Savers, beachgoing is sharply down this summer because there’s simply not enough daylight before most people have to go to work, and it’s too hot and windy most evenings. This I can believe.
Like John, I don’t particularly buy into (or care about) the energy saving theory. I just can’t believe that people don’t like to sit out in their gardens, snags on the barbie, and have a few stubbies in the evening while it’s still light.
(And as someone who grew up ten degrees further from the equator, on the western edge of the time zone, even a 20h sunset is about two hours too early.)
I am historically a very big fan of our US Postal Service. It’s easy to take for granted how excellent it is until you live someplace else.
Joe sent a 10-pound box of Important Goods from Boston to Perth, using this fancy Global Express Guaranteed service that I’d never heard of. My guaranteed delivery date was March 19, but this was itself perplexing — surely the US Postal Service does not operate in Australia, so how can they possibly feel so confident as to extend a guarantee?
I checked the PO Box on March 19 and of course there was no slip telling me that a package had arrived. Typical. The online tracker says that there was an attempted delivery that morning. How the fuck do you attempt delivery to a PO Box? You either deliver it or you don’t.
A little bit of digging reveals that this service is actually provided by FedEx! That explains the guarantee, at least.
Wait for it. Think it through.
Just like in the US, FedEx can’t deliver to Australian PO boxes. So now my package is in postal limbo somewhere in Perth.
If you’re wondering how someone is supposed to know that a package — dropped off at a US post office, for a USPS service — can’t be delivered to a PO box, then you’re in good company. It turns out that it’s buried in this 2,400-page document (take my word for it):
I wanted to pose that very question to the helpful blokes at the US Postal Service, and indeed I learned a great deal from a short conversation with a woman and her supervisor:
Next.
Last month, FedEx Australia provided me with the best customer service experience of my entire life: I called them, waited on hold for five minutes, and hung up. Ten minutes later, they called me back to find out what I wanted. And when they couldn’t answer my question, they said they’d ring the US, find out, and call me back again. This shouldn’t be exceptional, but try to imagine service like that! It made my head spin. That’s where I next pinned my hopes.
Once again they were very helpful, and provided a further intriguing piece of data: while FedEx does, indeed, take the package from the United States, across the ocean, into Australia, through customs, and to (near) its final destination, it doesn’t actually deliver the package. Australia Post does.
Why, then, can they not deliver to PO boxes? And where the fuck is my package? They suggest I contact Australia Post.
Australia Post, not being not the streamlined and efficient 24-hour global company that is FedEx, was of course not reachable until the next morning.
At that point, they informed me that it had been waiting for me in the post office this entire time, but someone forgot / mis-filed / deliberately destroyed the slip that tells me to come claim it.
I have some suggestions for the USPS / FedEx / Australia Post global package juggernaut:
Sometimes it seems like I have to do fucking everything, you goddamn retards.
John’s post about data struck a chord. Part of my Australian lecture series has been about engineering process — certainly about the PSP/TSP, in part, but more importantly about the fact that you need a defined process of some kind, because our industry is a disaster of epic proportions.
The SEI is fond of the assertion that you can’t improve what you don’t measure, about which I could not more readily agree.
When it comes to so many things, if you don’t have data, you’re just flapping your lips.
Easter in Australia is a tour de force. In Canada or the US, I’m used to getting Friday or Monday as a public holiday — if it’s a really employee-friendly workplace, maybe you can choose which day.
Here in Australia, I was instrucuted to take Friday and Monday off. And Thursday. You know, Easter Thursday, Palm Thursday, whatever it’s called in the scriptures. And as public employees, Tuesday — Ash Tuesday, I believe? With this kind of work ethic and no nuclear power, it’s no wonder this country can barely keep itself hydrated.
Anyway, because almost everyone has an eleven-day weekend, it’s a major travel holiday. We’re cooperating by renting a house in Lancelin.
Directly behind (indeed, beneath) the camera is the beach. The top deck was for cheese and champagne while we watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean every evening. The middle deck was the Hammock Deck, used primarily for hammocking, and the bottom deck was the Breakfast Deck / Barbecue Area Alpha. That is a complete inventory of the decks, except for the deck in the back.
The interior of the house is the area designated for drinking, with the exception of any drinking that takes place outside.
When we were not drinking or eating — which, to be honest, comprised most of the four days we spent there — we took in the local sights, such as Impressive Piles of Sand National Park.
A very intrepid and entrepreneurial man acquired a school bus, jacked it up on a huge suspension and monster truck tires, weighed it down to prevent it tipping over, added bucket seats with individual suspension — oh here, just look.
It has a licence plate. That thing is street legal. Anyway, imagine screaming over the dunes in that thing. It looks kinda like this, which I’m afraid is the best I can offer.
After we recovered from our complimentary back surgery, we drove quite a long way to visit the pinnacles:
There was apparently a small sign at the entrance to the park, I was informed several weeks later, asking us please not to climb on the pinnacles. Knowing that would have been unfortunate, because it would have precluded this entry in the growing archive of me posing for my long-overdue Heisman Trophy:
Last but most certainly not least, I don’t know how I can possibly conclude without showing you the poster I found in the basement:
Ray Charles. You will never be forgotten.
Today I went to Gloucester National Park and climbed the famous Gloucester Tree. More on that later, perhaps, when I am rested.
For now, birdses.
Now that I have my ASIC — about which more, much more, will be said later — I thought it prudent to get a little more experience with Australian airspace and cross-country desert navigation before I begin my great east-coast adventure.
Perth is isolated. It’s closer to Indonesia than another major Australian city, and the distance in between is not precisely brimming with compelling tourist destinations unless you are excited by dehydration. This complicates matters of site-selection for a quick day trip, even in a 200 km/h aircraft.
Because I’m living with people who know a thing or two about Western Australia, however, I learned that only 350 km from Perth is an interesting tree. If you’re wondering whether I flew for an hour and a half, drove in a taxi for 25 minutes, climbed a tall tree, turned around, and came home — wonder no longer:
It would not be a lie to say that I started to question the soundness of this plan after the first twenty or thirty meters of climbing. I remember thinking that this would be a colossally stupid and utterly pointless way to die, which I still believe to be true. I didn’t have my iPod with me — a gross oversight — but I did sing the opening lines from Avalanche to myself over and over again as a sort of mantra.
After thirty or forty meters, when I was looking down on the tops of other trees, I was really quite keen to be finished. But as soon as I got to the top, all was well.
I could have stayed up there all day if it hadn’t started to rain; climbing down was no problem.
It is a really great tree; totally worth it.
This tree was growing in the garden behind the house I lived at in Perth, and was due for a burn. It gets a burn every ten to twenty years, I’m told, about as often as it would normally get burned by a bush fire.
In these trees, the fire actually promotes growth.
Also the fire-scorched trunk looks like a total badass. Who’s going to mess with that tree? Nobody, that’s who.
I was in Canberra three or four years ago, and enjoyed my brief stay thoroughly (although as a sales trip it did not conclude with any actual revenue per se). I recall forming a life-long fondness for Cooper’s sparkling ale. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased to conclude my present little lecture series here at the Australian National University.
After I dispensed with my academic (ahem) duties, I was free to explore the many attractions to be found in the capital city. I made it to exactly three before I ran out of time:
The botanic gardens were worth the visit, although autumn is not strictly-speaking ideal, as relatively few of the plants were in flower.
I expect I could spend an entire week in the war memorial by itself. It’s comprehensive, fascinating, and very moving. I made it through World War I and into World War II’s Northern Africa campaign before they threw me out at closing time.
…at which time I discovered that my bike tire was flat, so I enjoyed a nice walk home.
In contrast to the rest of Canberra, which impressed me as a cyclist to no end, getting to the parliament building on two wheels was not entirely straightforward. I eventually figured it out, though, in time for the last guided tour of the day. Unfortunately parliament was not in session; much like our Congress, they almost never do any actual work.
I have an hojillion things to write about, but the days are just packed around here, so there’s no telling when I’ll get to them.
In the meantime, I turn your attention to William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. He literally wrote the book on copyright. In the last few weeks, he’s done much to expand my layman’s understanding of odd corner cases, and how other cases are actually confronted in front of judges.
If you need some help traipsing through the archives, consider The Cablevision Decision, C-Span and Originality, Claim Preclusion and State Courts and WKRP in Cincinnati and Section 114(b).
I should have spent today planning my upcoming trip, but instead I went to the zoo.
Rain or shine, Taronga Zoo is excellent, and a good time was had by many.
A few weeks ago I talked Stuart into joining me on a sort of once-until-I-retire adventure. All of my other friends, I wish to make clear for the record, would rather stay at home and work instead of be chauffeured around Australia in a private airplane. It is astonishing.
We planned to begin our air tour of eastern Australia today, covering some 6,000 km in three weeks if all goes to plan. Of course it will not, indeed already has not.
The unexpected and inescapable rain — it’s been bucketing down in Sydney for days now, close to 200mm in total, in a part of the country ravaged by a two-year drought — has put us a day behind before we’ve even departed.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the forecast for tomorrow is similarly awful — but television says that the rain will be gone. From what I’ve seen of the BoM so far, to be honest, my money is on television.
Lousy Smarch weather.
Television comes through again — it was a beautiful morning, with scattered clouds above 12,000 feet.
I went to Bankstown bright and early and got checked out with minimal fuss in VH-HQR. After a quick jaunt back to “downtown” Bankstown for lunch and to pick up Stuart, we were on our way.
Kempsey being just a short 2.2-hour trip up the coast, it was a good, low-stress start to the journey. There will be several six- and seven-hour marathon days in the weeks ahead, racing against the sun, as my Australian licence validation doesn’t include the night-VFR privileges that are standard in the US.
Today’s trip did include, however, a beautiful stretch at 500 feet over the ocean beneath the Newcastle military airspace, zipping along miles of uninhabited beach, catching the occasional glimpse of today’s military manoeuvers in the clouds above. Apart from that, lingering clouds kept us down around 1500 feet at times, and gave us a quick rinse in a couple isolated showers.
Unfortunately, Kempsey is only mildly close to our actual destination — South West Rocks — but the South West Rocks airstrip, while on the map, is not mentioned anywhere in the airstrip guide (understandably) or the internet (surprisingly). There are also no hire car facilities (because the “airport” is a fuel pump and single empty room with, perhaps, a telephone). We took a 35-minute taxi to the coast.
It’s going to be an early night for me; I was up before dawn today, and I’m out at 07:30 the next two days for the boat ride to Fish Rock.
In other news, I am nearly vibrating with excitement for the World Cup final on Saturday. I went to bed early last night — by which I mean before the 23:30 match start time — and so missed the righteous thrashing administered by Australia to South Africa to claim their finals berth.
Let’s just hope they don’t screw it up like they did this summer. Twice.
When I asked the dive shop in Perth where I should dive on the east coast, at the top of their list was South West Rocks.
Fish Rock is about 30 minutes from shore, and once you’ve moored you’re basically two minutes from wide-eyed amazement. Rottnest Island was pretty; Fish Rock is almost unbelievable. It is extreme.
There’s a gully next to the cave where the nurse sharks hang out during the day; if you hover there in the water, they’ll come check you out with one of their beady, side-mounted eyes. Their big teeth are for crunching bony fish and crustaceans, I am told.
If you get bored with the sharks, you can swim with the giant schools of little yellow fish. They’ll part to allow you through, but don’t expect them to go very far. They’re lazy little fish.
Traversing the cave itself was an experience, to say nothing of what actually lives within. Its deep end is about 24 meters, the shallow end about 14. In between is a bubble cave, a local maximum that traps all of the bubbles from the divers. Since we consume so little of the oxygen in each breath, it’s quite habitable; you can surface in there and have a little chat.
I haven’t yet learned to photograph in the dark very well. I don’t have proper lights, and a strobe has its own issues. This resting wobbegong shark turned out ok:
Fish Rock exceeded my already high expectations. I could spend weeks here, I suspect, and find something new on every dive.
I highly recommend Fish Rock Dive Centre — they were good-natured, professional, easy-going guys, with reasonable accommodation and decent Indian food on-site. South West Rocks Dive Centre didn’t return my call or email, so screw them.
Southport (YSPT) didn’t return my calls or email either. It’s listed in the airport guide as “private” — not to mention that I don’t like to land where I’m not 100% sure they’ll have fuel — so I elected to fly into the somewhat busier and further-away Gold Coast airport.
It was another beautiful flight, although with somewhat more altitude than our trip from Sydney. A quick chat with Brisbane Center for our airways clearance into Gold Coast class C airspace, and we were soon on the ground.
Interesting fact about Gold Coast (Coolangatta) Airport: the New South Wales / Queensland border neatly bisects the main runway, so I touched down in NSW and took the first taxiway into QLD. Its true loyalties apparently lie with Queensland, however, as it elects not to observe DST during the summer.
It was recommended that we stay in beautiful Jupiter’s casino, which was sage advice indeed. Very comfortable, excellent service. It’s even one of the few Australian hotels to have discovered the revenue possibilities of internet access.
Today was a slow day; a late breakfast, a trip to the beach, and some flight planning.
For supper, though, we found an excellent Japanese restaurant not far from the hotel, with a deceptively inelegant web site. The restaurant was filled to the brim with authentic Japanese delights, an unexpected triumph and a fitting end to my three-month (!) sushi fast.
I don’t know why I didn’t eat sushi in Western Australia. I tried one day, for lunch, but the place at which we were going to eat was closed for renovations. I’d never have thought it possible to go three months with my sushi thirst unslaked, but here we are.
It turns out that in order to get airways clearance out of YBCG, they require a filed flight plan — an atypical situation in my limited experience, not mentioned anywhere in the ERSA — but Gold Coast Ground was happy to file one for me.
The eastern VFR corridor around Brisbane is another magnificent low-altitude coastal route, with mile upon mile of perfect, unspoilt beaches and clear blue water. Visibility was for the most part excellent, and you could see little bits of sand or reef poking up to just below the surface of the water.
Gold Coast, QLD (YBCG) to Townsville, QLD (YBTL) via Rockhampton, QLD (YBRK) — 713 nm
Rockhampton is known as the Beef Capital of Australia, so it pained me greatly to stop only for fuel. Such is the trouble with touring eastern Australia in just three weeks. After Rockhampton we did a little deke to get inland of the coastal mountains, and then went pretty directly.
We had planned to stop for a day in Sunshine Coast, but the rain delay in Sydney required a cut somewhere, and this was the easiest choice. We’ll have to live without seeing the Australia Zoo on this trip. The Taronga Zoo will have to tide me over, which should be easy; it was pretty outstanding.
It was a very long ride to Townsville — 7.1 hours on the Hobbs — and we arrived just before sunset. It was bumpy all the way up — a real pain in the ass day to fly without an autopilot — but it’s nice to be here.
Once in Townsville, we had dinner at the very satisfactory Michel’s Restaurant. Fresh South Australian oysters and grain-fed sirloin did not disappoint.
The passenger/freight steamer SS Yongala sank (assisted by a cyclone) in 1911, and as such has had almost a hundred years to amass sea creatures. Like a cat lady, it adopts everything in sight until the house is barely recognizable beneath an accumulated patina, and the malevolent Child Protective Services threatens to take away its children.
Put simply, this is a vessel that requires imagination, because not a single piece of steel remains visible to the human eye. Every millimeter of its former coal-fired glory is now merely a base upon which sea life has taken hold.
As the only reef structure in an otherwise sandy area, the fish life that call it home are many and varied. One side — the boat sank on a bit of an angle — has fewer than the other, which is to say only a few tens of thousands.
The only downside is that it’s a good 50 nm from Townsville, which requires two and a half hours of steaming each way. I could have done this math in advance, of course, but then I might not have gone, so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t. I had planned to dive with a friend of a friend — who, indeed, has a boat! — but a last-minute work obligation scuttled those plans as surely as the Yongala itself.
I am terribly unhappy with the photos, but I learned some important lessons today about lighting, particularly in water as deep as that which the Yongala inhabits. Unfortunately, I learned these lessons in retrospect, which is why most of the photos are so blue and awful. That’s pretty much what it looks like 20-30 meters under, until I get some better lights: blue.
Virtually none of the photographs are worth showing to you, but you can hit the flickr stream if you are so inclined.
I pre-filed our flight details today; I’m still not sure whether that’s necessary, but since I finally had internet access, it wasn’t hard.
Not that it did us much good, in terms of getting out of Townsville on time. I did my preflight run-up on the military hardstand while waiting for a small commercial turboprop to taxi past, and when I switched to the left magneto it felt like the engine was trying to tear itself off its mounts. Probably something related to the 600+ RPM drop off.
I’d experienced a similar (but only 200 RPM) drop during my checkout flight in Sydney, but it disappeared as soon as we called the mechanic, and couldn’t be reproduced. This time it was much worse, and remained unimproved after trying to burn off whatever might be fouling the spark plugs (unsurprisingly). So it was back to the apron to find a mechanic.
Fortunately this happened in Townsville, where from the general aviation parking I could hit three mechanics with a cricket ball, and not, say, Birdsville, which if we’re lucky will have both a telephone and fuel.
Because I was only expecting a 90-minute flight, however, we were already cutting it pretty close. If this took more than about an hour to resolve, the disappearance of our atom-smashing light source would strand us in Townsville for another day. While Townsville certainly seems nice, I have things that need doing in Cairns.
In terms of this being a simple spark plug issue, the depth of our mechanic’s skepticism cannot easily be rendered on the written page. Nevertheless, he agreed to at least begin his investigation there and, to my quiet delight, found two inoperative. Replacing them returned the engine to its previous fine form, and a lesson was learned: two dead spark plugs on one mag can indeed cause a 600+ RPM drop.
The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful, save for a parachute drop directly in front of us that required a small course deviation. (Stuart took a photo, but honestly, at that distance the jumper is basically indistinguishable from dirt on the lens.)
The Cairns “western VFR” approach to runway 15 is interesting, in that you effectively fly a wide right circuit with a mountain between you and the runway. If you zoom in and set the map to “Hybrid,” you can see it quite clearly on the GPS track. (I like how the one narrow strip that we care about is the only low-res satellite imagery for miles in either direction.)
After making our way to the hotel, I had an extremely sub-par laksa for supper. I cannot in good faith recommend Limmy The Flavour Of Malaysia restaurant.
When this trip was originally conceived, a four-day trip into the Coral Sea — far enough out to experience a Great Barrier Reef that’s still alive — was its centrepiece, and I wasn’t going to let Stuart’s status as a non-diver put me off. It sounds like he had no trouble entertaining himself in the rainforest and shoreline of Cairns.
After a lot of reading and hemming and hawing I ended up going with Taka Dive, and I have no regrets. The crew were personable, entertaining, and professional, and I’d recommend them without hesitation. They took the preservation of the reef pretty seriously, which by now should not surprise anyone.
The weather was superb throughout, with excellent visibility and very little current. I had grown to be less than a fan of diving with larger groups (we were 23 plus crew), but these dive sites were so enormous that there wasn’t any issue.
The two night dives, in particular, I enjoyed much more than my previous night dives. The boat was lit up like the sun (and thus easy to find), visibility was excellent (unlike in, say, the Swan River), and we got away from the big group — this was key. In a big group I find myself spending the entire time trying to figure out which light is my buddy and where the hell he’s going.
Fourteen dives in three and a half days is exhausting, almost too much, eating after every dive because you’re famished, stealing every other surface interval for a nap. It usually felt like I’d just finally gotten dry when the divemaster was getting us riled up about the next site; he was fond of reminding us that we signed up for a dive adventure, not a dive vacation.
They offer a seven-day trip, but four days was exactly enough for me. I think on day five, putting on that wetsuit would have felt too much like work.
Although the weather was good, this was the open ocean, and there were swells of 3-4 meters while we were steaming along overnight. I had prepared for the worst, but in the end it didn’t affect my appetite or my sleep at all. It was for the most part pleasant, like a hammock. There was one person who I think didn’t eat or sleep for two days, just barfed; he was a wreck.
white tip reef shark
Back on land, it was time to return to reality and plan tomorrow’s flights to Birdsville, in the middle of the Australian nothingness. When you’re flying anywhere in Australia, but especially when venturing out into the vast, empty desert, knowing where you’re going to get fuel is serious business.
There aren’t very many airports between Cairns and Birdsville for a fuel stop, and my original plan, Richmond, is entirely sold out of avgas. Fortunately, Winton — home of Waltzing Matilda and 100nm further south — has 18,000 litres. Tomorrow’s weather does not look encouraging, so we’ll see whether or not we actually get there.
Daybreak revealed low clouds and intermittent tropical showers, with a forecast of “potentially clearing” for the afternoon. Not ideal, but perhaps not a total disaster.
The unique geography around the Cairns airport, as I mentioned before, makes a low-visibility departure even less straightforward than usual. Fortunately, the satellite images indicate that if we can just get inland a bit, we should be cloud-free the rest of the way. Unfortunately, we may have to go quite a ways down the coast before we can cut in.
Given the quickly-rising inland terrain, there was absolutely no way I was going to turn west until it was visibly clear through the mountains. Fortunately it was only a single, relatively thin scattered-to-broken layer at that point, and we were able to pop through a big hole and fly above until we were past the mountains and the clouds dispersed.
By the time we left Cairns after lunch, there was no way we could make it all the way to Birdsville today. And since there’s almost nothing between here and there, we decided to call it a day at our planned fuel stop in Winton.
If you’re ever flying around the Queensland outback and need a place to stay, the North Gregory Hotel in Winton is a treat. David, the husband in the husband/wife owner pair, is a pilot, and he leaves a car in his hangar at the Winton airport for arriving guests. I assume that he is unconcerned by the prospect of the car being stolen; let us just say that it is not a car that I would want to take into the desert.
He and his wife chatted with us while we ate; the four times that he’s been to America have all been for Oshkosh, so he understood immediately what I was doing touring eastern Australia in a Piper Warrior.
Tomorrow if the weather cooperates, we’re contemplating making up our lost half-day and going all the way to Adelaide. If not, we’ll take pleasure in experiencing historic Birdsville.
Birdsville (much of the Australian desert, really) is not quite as dry as many people, including myself, think; indeed, it receives an average of 115mm over 33 rainy days each year. Today was one of those days.
Although we flew through only light showers en route to Birdsville, there were major lines of thunderstorms between here and Leigh Creek, and on to Adelaide. So much for making up our lost half day.
It is also, apparently, not as empty: as I was beginning my descent into Birdsville, I switched over to the Birdsville traffic frequency and made the standard radio announcement. Of course nobody responded — but three minutes later, another voice announced his intentions, and was very surprised to hear my reply. Five minutes after we landed, the one scheduled commercial flight arrived. The guy pumping our avgas said they get about 4 planes a day; we’re just lucky, I guess.
VH-TXG was occupied by a very nice, middle-aged couple passing through Birdsville en route (if I recall correctly) to Mt Isa. There were no thunderstorms in their way, so they refueled themselves and their plane and were quickly off again.
One nice thing about stopping in a town of population approximately 200 is that you can park right in front of the hotel. I wish I had realized how awesome this is in time to get a better photograph.
(Aside: Sometimes I really just want to get the plane put away and Stuart is all “blah blah blah”, and I have to be all “Hey Stuart, less talk, more chock” and he never gets the reference.)
The Birdsville Hotel is full, full, if you can believe that, because a tour is coming through. Fortunately, the caravan park had exactly one cabin left, so we didn’t have to hop back in the plane and try to find a nearby town with a sealed runway, VFR conditions, and accommodation.
The Birdsville Hotel had a much better selection of beer than I had anticipated, even if relatively little is on tap. Stuart was conned into drinking a VB, because he’d never had one. He certainly won’t make that mistake again.
I grew up in a midwestern town with easy access to areas of relatively little light pollution, so I like to think that I have a passing familiarity with the nighttime sky. It was with this nighttime sky (or rather, the nighttime sky of the southern hemisphere) that I was so looking forward to being reacquainted.
The short walk back to the caravan park was mindblowing in that primal, caveman-brain way. I wish we’d had the time and transportation to get away from the few lights of Birdsville, but even as it was, it was a hundred or a thousand times more densely packed than the skies of my youth. A million times greater than the ten stars you can see in Boston. A truly awe-inspiring view of the galaxy with the naked eye.
The last thing I did before departing this morning was allow my laptop to come tumbling out of my bag. Of course I would do this in a sparse caravan park cabin with stone tiles, instead of, say, last week on the opulent carpets of the Jupiter’s casino.
Given an initial visual assessment of the damage, I was terrified that I was going to be due for a new display and maybe main logic board — no mean feat on the outskirts of the Simpson Desert — but it unsuspended without any problem. Now that I’ve snapped the bottom of the display back together (eep), the damage seems to be entirely cosmetic (if you look closely).
After that excitement, we had breakfast in a little art gallery / cafe / internet hovel. It was a weird little commune — no less so for being in Birdsville — but the ham and cheese croissant was tasty. Their Windows internet machine took almost ten minutes to login — I don’t even want to know what kind of pestilent malware were clogging those arteries — but I was eventually able to get my weather briefing and file a flight plan.
The tiny desert flies, by the way, are numerous, relentless, and annoying. Our super-DEET bug cream did a decent job, but can only do so much to tame their powerful lust for our moist pink bodies. There’s absolutely nothing we can do to keep them out of the airplane cabin while we load up, but leaving the small side window open during the engine run-up tends to suck most of them out.
You may be surprised to learn that William Daniels is alive and well and working a Melbourne Centre air traffic control area. I know I was, but that voice is unmistakable. There’s no other explanation.
We were also operating in the vicinity of an aircraft operating under the “SHADOW” callsign, with which I was not previously familiar. According to this page at least, it was either an RAAF C-130 Hercules or a Navy HS 748. Interesting?
Also interesting to almost nobody is that I flew my 100th hour today. Fortunately, Stuart seems to be relatively oblivious to just how little experience 100 hours is, oblivious enough to fall asleep in the cockpit whilst I court death with every move.
The stop in Broken Hill was quick and uneventful; unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Stuart got any photos of the interior of the huge open-pit mine in the middle of town (this one gives you a sense of scale, at least). This satellite look should give you some idea.
Birdsville, QLD (YBDV) to Adelaide, SA (YPPF) via Broken Hill, NSW (YBHI) — 616 nm
You may think that Broken Hill is not exactly a direct route, and you would not be wrong. The original plan was to depart Birdsville to the south/southwest and stop for fuel in Leigh Creek, SA, however possible thunderstorms together with gusty winds and mountainous Leigh Creek geography made Broken Hill the more sober choice. It was a long day either way, only slightly longer for the detour.
Upon our arrival in Adelaide, while I was asking around for information about taxis or hire cars, a really nice young CFI from one of the flight schools offered us a lift into town. He was unswayed by my many protests that he needn’t go to the trouble, so we talked about flying whilst being very courteously shuttled into town. Thank you, random stranger!
We’re staying in a nice independent hotel in North Adelaide, and an easily-walkable shopping and restaurant district provided a venue for our Indian feast. So far, Adelaide is outstanding.
Much of today was relatively lazy, but I have no problem with that; it’s been a long few days of flying.
We eventually took the free bus downtown and sought out an internet cafe. Stuart used a desktop with no problems, but I used my laptop and suffered through the worst $5 internet experience ever. The owner had to reboot his server and issue a couple IDs, and that eventually worked, but the packet loss was appalling.
He, of course, blamed it on my laptop, but I think that was just this strange anti-Apple bias that I’ve been encountering recently. Maybe it is related to yesterday’s cabin incident, but I find that very unlikely.
Once our internet and burrito requirements were satisfactorily resolved, we made our way to historic AAMI Stadium to see the Port Adelaide Power give a good thrashing to the Richmond Tigers, although they really stopped playing about midway through the third quarter. It got pretty sloppy pretty fast from that point, but the first two and a half quarters of clinical football more than made up for it. A good time was had by all.
Tomorrow: wine country!
