Frontier Flying: Exploring the Australian Outback by Air
(continued) Of course, the remote nature of the Outback means that travel there is always something of an adventure, no matter how you do it. The good news about the area’s arid climate is that the skies are generally wide open and clear, and both air traffic and controlled airspace are almost non-existent. On the other hand, ATC services are also scarce, and airports in the Outback—many of which are only dirt or gravel strips—are as far apart as the towns and don’t always offer fuel. As a result, some careful pre-flight planning is essential, and your fuel gauge can quickly become one of your primary flight instruments.
Navigation is also a bit challenging in a land where there are few radio navigation aids and even fewer distinct landmarks to differentiate one section of desert from another—for hundreds of miles in any direction. Local pilots assured me that it is, in fact, possible to successfully navigate across the Outback using only WAC charts, as long as you start tracking your progress as soon as you take off and never take your finger off the chart. But as far as I’m concerned, central Australia is one of those places in the world where a pilot should consider some kind of handheld GPS a go/no go item on the checklist. It’s also a place where pilots should plan to fly only in daylight, unless they have an instrument-rated pilot on board.
 And yet, the rewards of flying in the Outback stem from the very same sources as its challenges. For its vast stretches of uncluttered land and sky offer an opportunity to leave civilization far behind and experience a mix of unusual sights, colorful characters and frontier adventure that could never be found closer to home.
Take, for example, the tiny desert outpost of William Creek, along the Oodnadatta Track, at the southern end of the Simpson Desert. William Creek has 14 people, two pubs, Australia’s first solar-powered, satellite pay phone, a single parking meter–and, in my estimation, at least half the world’s population of flies. The dirt airstrip there is also crooked in every axis—it varies in width, curves to the right and is something less than level. When I arrived there in the 172, there was also about a 25-knot crosswind blowing straight across the runway—which, since there are few unicom or FBO services in the Outback, I discovered only when I flew overhead and saw the windsock sticking straight out to the right. And which, given the fact that alternate airports are few and far between, meant only that I then knew the landing was going to be a lively one.
But William Creek is also a place where you can taxi almost right up to the local pub door. And John, who runs the pub, and Trevor, who runs the airport operation, are two of the friendliest and most helpful people you’d ever want to meet. Trevor even managed to hook me up with a local cattle drive while I was in town, giving me a renewed appreciation for modern horsepower, and got me a tour of a local cattle station that covers a staggering 6.5 million acres of central Australian real estate. One thing’s for sure. Whether it’s beer, flies, multi-trailer “road trains” or cattle station—nothing in the Outback exists on a small scale.
After departing William Creek, we headed out over nearby Lake Eyre—which sits below sea level and is dry for most of the year, but has a salt base so white that flying across it felt a bit like flying across Antarctica. While we were there, we also hunted down and flew over an icon of local folklore—the fuselage of a Cessna 210 left there by a pilot who was apparently trying to impress his passengers with his ability to fly below sea level…and wound up impressing them right into the lakebed. We then flew over the remnants of the old Ghan Railway line, where spikes, or “dogs” from the 1800s still lie undisturbed in the sand, and “Marree Man”—a prehistoric-petroglyph-looking figure stretching some seven miles in length that locals actually suspect Australian army engineers of creating about eight years ago. In between, we passed over huge stretches of open land where camels, kangaroos, wallabies and even brumbies, or wild horses, can still be found running free.
Discuss this article in our forums
|
Copyright @ 2009 Bonnier Corp. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
