Day 7.       Tamworth - Caboolture

Friday the 15th May  began in Tamworth - and it was cold! - So cold in fact that the helicopters again had trouble starting. Despite use of "Start Ya Bastard" John's battery ran too flat to turn the engine enough to start it.  Fortunately we were at the motel and we borrowed the owners four wheel drive and jump started it. 

Our planned track at this point was  Tamworth - Armidale- Coff's Harbour - Ballina.  Then fuel up at Ballina and track coastal all the way to Caboolture. 

From Tamworth to Armidale was more of the same - dry brown country in the grip of drought but from Armidale the scenery began to green up.  We had some reservations about the crossing from Armidale to Coff's Harbour.  Prior to arriving it was whether we would have clear sky.  The track  in a direct line is over real tiger country - mountains, gorges, creeks, rain forest - and we had been told that it can cloud over very quickly. As it turned out  on the day we had complete blue sky with no cloud at all. The thing that did worry us was the twenty - thirty knot winds on the tail that would surely be full of turbulence over the mountains.

We planned a deviation toward the north to cut out Coff's and fly via Grafton -at least that would cut out most of the tiger  country and gave us only a short period of turbulence over the gorges, peaks and forests.  In the end we had some of the smoothest flying most of us have ever had. In fact most count it as the best single days flying of their careers.  The wind was on the tail, but the air was smooth as silk, despite the mountains.  We made Ballina with plenty of time to spare.

After a refuel a Ballina tracking up the coast at 500 ft was a delight.  The scenery is some of the most spectacular in Australia .

Entering Caboolture was a bit tricky because there seemed to be general confusion about which frequency was the working frequency. Despite us checking notams, and contacting Air Services by phone and being told there were no Notams out for Caboolture (We knew a Unicom frequency would be active for the air show which was on for the next two days but assumed it must not have been active yet.) we flew in using the standard CTAF frequency.  But an official sounding voice came on and  told us unceremoniously we were on the wrong frequency!  Added to that they had the winsock hidden behind the makeshift control tower and a few of us  came in and set up for the strip that was into the wind, as it was at 1000 ft, again to be told that on the ground the opposite strip was the duty runway. Ah well - we did all the right things and still made a blue.  Anyway we got onto the ground without disaster so that's the main thing.

That afternoon we watched the aerobatics practice sessions from the hotel verandah with the expectation that the next day would be a pretty interesting one.