Diary of an aviation nut: Tracking North to a historic secret World War 2 US air force base

Our second day of flying had us leaving from Louth and following the Darling River to Bourke. Tracking along the Darling is difficult as it’s not one river in many places but a series of side streams and tributaries.

After a pleasant 32 min flight we dropped into Bourke just long enough to fuel the aircraft, have a pee and we were off again.

VH-BAC is powered by a Lycoming IO-360 which is very common and most pilots plan a fuel consumption of 35 litres/hr for that engine type. We were a bit horrified to learn when we collected her that we should plan for a consumption of 38 litres/hr. That was going to make some of our longer legs a bit tight. We were pleased to find after refuelling for the first time that our actual consumption was 30 litres/hr which was what I expected. Phew!

The track from Bourke to Charleville was over mostly featureless scrubby cattle country and we entertained ourselves spotting the stations marked on the charts and their airstrips. Many are marked on the charts as ALA’s (Aircraft Landing Area) but can be difficult to spot. The highlight of this leg was the testing of the Aussie Aviation Vacuum Cleaner.

We were flying in the early afternoon and the ground was heating up so it was a bit lumpy and bumpy. Simon used to fly gliders so gave me a lesson on how to read the clouds and where to expect updrafts and downdrafts so that was useful and we surfed the updrafts to gain 10 - 15kts of ground speed only to loose it when we fought the next downdraft.

On our arrival we joined a tour of the Charleville Airfield which was really interesting. The Airfield occupies a large area as it was built during the Second World War. In its heyday there were 3,500 US Airmen stationed at the base, 101 buildings and 160 aircraft which included B-17 and P-38 and many other types. Charleville was selected at the time as it was out of range from a naval aggressor or enemy bombers. All that remains now are the large runways and taxiways and a hangar but on the tour we were taken around many sites where the foundations of buildings and large aircraft tie-downs were still evident if you knew where to look.