Diary of an aviation nut: Turning South

Many pilots avoid controlled airspace and large airports where there’s complex procedures to follow. I don’t and actually enjoy reading up on the procedures and being directed around an airfield toward the active runway way for takeoff.

Darwin is real busy with two large General Aviation aprons where there are dozens of aircraft parked and coming and going. There's a lot of military aircraft on the field as well.

After filing a flight plan about 30mins before departure (which is so easy in Australia using AvPlan), I started and called for a clearance to depart on VFR Route 5. The clearance controller gives you a transponder code, and departure instructions which include the approved route and assigned altitude. You then call a ground controller for clearance to taxi to the run-up bay for your engine checks, etc. When that’s done a further call to ground will give you clearance to the hold point for the active runway. Switching over to the control tower you tell them you’re “ready” and, when traffic permits, they give you instructions to line-up and take off. You’re not airborne for very long before you’re then told to contact the approach controller who monitors your flight out of their airspace and who will permit further climb and/or deviation around cloud if necessary. It’s good fun and more complex than the procedures I fly back in New Zealand.

There’s lots of military airspace south of Darwin on the southerly route to Kununurra which is active at the moment in the lead up to the Pitch Black. Fortunately the airspace that was active was above us and as long as I climbed no higher than 8500’ I wasn’t in any danger of being shot down.

My track cut across vast plains dotted with salt pans, where a network of streams and waterways snaked their way toward the coast. The landscape shifted constantly and the 90 minute journey to Lake Argyle passed quickly. I never once tired of staring out the window, just watching the world glide past.

We decided to fly past Kununurra and overfly the Bungle Bungles. We flew down the eastern shores of the huge man made Lake Argyle. Covering an area of roughly 1,000km², the lake holds a volume of water equivalent to about 18 to 21 times the size of Sydney Harbour, making it look and feel like a massive inland sea right in the middle of the outback.

Rising abruptly from the red dirt of Western Australia’s Kimberley region, the Bungle Bungle range looks less like a natural landscape and more like an alien city of giant, beehive-shaped towers. Famed for their striking, zebra-striped bands of orange sandstone and dark grey lichen, these ancient structures have been sculpted by wind and rain over 350 million years.

There’s a prescribed route tourist flights are supposed to fly over the Bungle Bungles which separates aircraft and ensures everyone is flying in the same direction. We’d overlaid that on our charts but got it completely wrong! Fortunately there was no other air traffic and we just did our own thing without getting in anyone else’s way.

Leaving the Bungle Bungles, I turned north and headed for Kununurra overflying the abandoned Argle Diamond mine on the way. What a big hole in the ground!

We booked a dinner cruise on Lake Kununurra and that was a pleasant end to a long day of flying.