Hello dear diary-fans.
Here we go messages from Down Under.
Leaving Holland….Schiphol Airport.
picture courtesy Indya.
——-Arrival on Saturday December 9 in the early morning.
“Here I am sitting in a SUBWAY on Spencerstreet in Melbourne ,as anything a bit more fancy, is still closed at 7 AM.
Had an easy trip from more than 6.30 hours from Amsterdam to Abu Dhabi and a bit over 13 hours to Melbourne. On the ticket was written 16 hours and I had no clue how I was going to survive that, but I did ……as the “only” 13 hours -plus announced by the captain , made me straight away happy.
Also the dream liner with enough good space to sit and breeze was nice. So different to the earlier AIRBUS, where you could not eat with fork and knife otherwise the neighbor had a blue eye. And bending over ,to grab your bag, nearly choked you.
Time flies when you have fun, so over the 2 flights I looked at the 8 episodes of the BRANDNEW series of Victoria part 2. So 8 hours of pure pleasure.
We had some delay after we arrived. The lady sitting behind me ,in her late thirties, came back from the toilet and fainted on my side.She looked dead!!! Panic, stewardesses running around and tried to get her “back” with waving paper over her till one of them came rushing with a green oxigyne bottle. After 10 minutes the lady moved her eyes and hands again but was still laler than pale.
Could not reach from here anybody at home, but my mobile was smart enough to straight away show me the correct Australian time.
Went with the red double deck SKYBUS to Spencerstreet Station [Southern Cross] . The bus can take 90 passengers and their luggage,…BUT….at 6 in the morning I was the ONLY one.
Waiting for the 9.12 VLINE train. All in all it kept me busy from home to home about 28 hours.”
Sunday afternoon;
During my first night ,I slept like a rose from 7.30 PM till 7.30 AM.
After dinner and the first bubbles the evening before in Barooga, Sunday was a day to clean and design the interior of the room for Inge, Rodger, Indya and Dexie.
First of course some shopping . Good to see that the town has changed and looks good.
Colin dropped in, so did Scott Percival who flies the Nationals in Waikirie. He brought a few beers which was lovely. Ingo and Bruce dropped in as well after soaring and towing.
Gliders left around 2 PM. I noticed some nice clouds then, but now at 3 it is blue!
Just a nice day.
Some other news!
—–interesting to see that Keith [Essex] a Minden pilot, moved from Omarama, where he had some great wave flights, to Kiripotib to taste the sunny site of soaring.
You expect long flights from Keith ,so between December 4 and 9 ,he had 1 rest-day and he flew 4x 1000- plus and 1x a 1.255,86 km. when he got the Namibian soaring weather in the “fingers”.Several 1000 triangles.
He flies an ARCUS M.
—–The B-C-T triangle had good weather with beautiful clouds and flights between 416 km. and 720.
—–NSW State Championships are this year in Temora a great area for soaring and more to the NE of us here in Toc. Luckily it’s drying out at the moment, and that goes VERY quick here, as they also had a lot of rain.
Day 1 is now ;
5 classes and 59 pilots. 10 In club, 7 in standard, 9 in 15 m. class, 14 in 18 m. and 19 in open.
Bob McCormack wrote;Good Blue day by Temora standards. Expecting 6000ft with light northerly winds.
Task s to North East – North West.
– Open / 18 – 360 km racing task,
– Standard / 15 – 3:15 AAT,
– Club – 3:30 AAT
Bruce keeps his blog again and you find it on;
Taylor’s Gliding Page
More news next time. No pictures yet.
Cheers Ritz