Kakadu

Kakadu National Park was first on our itinerary. It's huge, but a lot of it is only accessible by 4wd. Since we didn't have the budget for that (or the knowledge of how to drive one properly, or get ourselves out of trouble if we got stuck) it meant we were a bit limited in where we could go. Not to worry - there was plenty to see. Even if we hadn't quite anticipated just how far apart everything was...

For our first full day in the park, we started with a visit to the rock art site at Ubirr. We had booked a guided tour, but when the guide finally turned up (15 minutes late and speaking and acting like he was under the influence of something) we excused ourselves and explored on our own.

We learned that rock art had various uses. Some of the pictures are warnings to Aboriginal people about spirit forces in that area, or tell stories about how the land and features were created. Others are instructional, depicting the types of animals that are found in the area. I was interested to read that it was bad manners to touch up someone else's painting, but to create another painting over the top was perfectly acceptable. In some places there are multiple layers of painting.

Rock art in 'X-ray' styl

View from the Ubirr lookout

From Ubirr we picked up a few supplies in Jabiru, refuelled, and drove to Nawurlandja and did the lookout walk and the Anbangbang billabong walk.

Anbangbang billabong

Ibises at Anbangbang billabong

We had set aside the whole of the next day to do the 12 km Barrk walk at Nourlangie. The information boards on arrival said it shouldn't be called Nourlangie, because that refers to another place but ignorant white people keep calling it Nourlangie. It's a bit hard to not be another ignorant white person when it's written as Nourlangie on the maps and signs...

At the top of the big climb, before it got too hot!

Rocks and trees

Lunch was at the half-way point: Nanguluwurr rock art site

Back at the car park, we also visited the rock art site.

X-ray style painting of a kangaroo (with other layers underneath)

We made up our own story about this one.
'A kangaroo stole a boy's bike, so he killed it with a spear'

Jumping crocs

Since our flights had arrived around midnight, we had planned a 'recovery' day for our first day in Darwin. We took our time getting up and then walked to the Casuarina shopping mall, about 20 minutes away. We found somewhere to have brunch and did a bit of shopping - me for some things I can't get in PNG, and supplies from the supermarket for our first few days of campervanning. Then it was a taxi back to the hotel for what was left of the afternoon.

The next morning we packed up and made our way to the campervan hire depot. There we were given some bad news: the campervan that had been assigned to us in the system had been returned the day before with a faulty windscreen wiper and wouldn't be ready until 12:00. We had a jumping crocodile tour booked for 11:00, and when we explained this to the staff they looked into other options. At one stage it sounded like they would give us a complimentary car to go to the jumping crocs and then come back to collect the campervan - which would mean a really long day of driving! (45 mins each way to the crocs, and 3 hrs from there to our overnight stop at Jabiru.) But then they found a campervan of the same model was available from one of their sister companies, so they quickly checked it over and we loaded up.

It wasn't yet 11:00 but we weren't going to make it in time, so I called the tour company to explain the situation and they were able to book us on the 1:00 tour instead. This turned out to be quite good as there were two boats going out, so ours wasn't very full.

Jumping croc

BIG jumping croc

Impressive jumping croc

After the tour we continued the drive to Jabiru. We stopped for a short walk at the Mamukala wetlands, but not being birdwatchers I don't have much to write home about that.

Darwin holiday

My best friend and I started planning this holiday back in 2019. So it's been quite a long wait - thanks to Covid!

We had planned the trip for July 2020, but everyone ended up in lockdown.

We postponed it to July 2021, but leisure travel wasn't really feasible with mandatory hotel quarantine. Besides, most of the tourist attractions and accommodation didn't open that year.

We didn't even think about doing it in July 2022, because I was at a critical stage of flight training in PNG.

Why July? Because it's the cooler and drier time of the year. In the wet season (Oct-Mar), many roads become impassable and most of the tourist attractions close down.

Once we had decided to go, booking everything was pretty straightforward. We already had an itinerary and had researched where to stay, so it was just a matter of deciding on dates. We chose to avoid the school holidays, and to be in Katherine for show day.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

The day finally arrived and Jess dropped me off at Hagen airport. I checked in for my 10:00 flight and waited. And waited. And we all waited. Finally a staff member made an announcement - the plane would be arriving at 12:00. I started panicking. My flight from Moresby to Brisbane was scheduled to depart at 1:35. It was almost certain that I would miss it. I asked the ground staff what would happen, they said they would let the people in Moresby know. It wasn't much consolation.

Sure enough the plane arrived just after 12:00. I had resigned myself to the fact that God was in control and there was nothing I could do but wait, and then run once I got to Moresby. We took off from Hagen at 1:00 and landed in Moresby at 1:50. I collected my bag and motored over to the international terminal. The departures board confirmed that I had indeed missed the flight to Brisbane.

There was no queue at the service counter and the ladies set about rebooking my ticket for the next day and arranging a hotel room. But then an idea came. Also listed on the departures board was a flight to Cairns, departing at 5:00 that afternoon. I asked if it would be possible for me to get to Darwin via Cairns instead?

"We'll have to get permission to change your routing. I'll send an email."

I kept my thoughts to myself about how stupid it was to rely on email as a form of urgent communication, especially on a Sunday, and found a seat to wait while God did His thing behind the scenes. A few minutes later I saw some familiar faces walk through the door - a MAF couple who had been visiting Hagen and were on their way back to Cairns! I chatted with them for a while, until the service lady called me over to say my changes had been approved and I could check in.

I checked in and was told I would have to collect my bag in Cairns and check it in again. This made me nervous as I only had 1.5 hrs in Cairns, and Jetstar (who I would be flying with for the Cairns-Darwin flight) closes their bag drop 40 minutes before the flight, even if it's late. Again I just had to trust God that He would work things out.

As a precaution, I checked in for the Jetstar flight online. Uh-oh... I needed to print my boarding pass before coming to the airport. What a joke! But once again the service lady was happy to help me out by printing the pass for me.

To my surprise our flight left Moresby right on time. The plane was only half full, so getting through immigration and customs in Cairns was no trouble and I was out of the terminal with about an hour to spare.

Although the flight to Darwin was delayed by half an hour, I was still scheduled arrive before my friend. To top it off, my new Jetstar ticket had a $15 in flight food voucher included!

After arriving in Darwin I saw that the flight I was originally booked on from Brisbane to Darwin was going to be over an hour late, which meant that my friend would have had to hang around for an hour and a half!

As I reflected on the day I could see God's fingerprints all over it:
- arriving earlier than planned, even according to the original flight schedule
- seeing the MAF couple in Moresby
- not having to worry about whether my bag would make the connecting flight, because I had to pick it up at each stop
- meal being included from Cairns to Darwin
- Moresby staff being willing to print the Jetstar boarding pass for me

It was a humbling lesson in how God was, as usual, able to make good things come out of what seemed to be a bad situation.

Wantok

The Wantok is a weekly Tok Pisin newspaper. Each week, MAF is donated around 100 copies to take to bush communities. Recently the Wantok asked if we could send them pictures of people reading the paper, so on a trip to Hesalibi, I did...

The coronation of King Charles clearly puts a date on this photograph!

Wantok was so happy with the photo that they published it on the front page!

Wantok i kamap long Hesalibi!
(Wantok arrives at Hesalibi)

Last week I had another trip to Hesalibi and I made sure to take copies of the paper.

I attempted to recreate the original photograph...

Everyone wanted to have a look...

One man was a little perturbed though. He looked at all the newspapers I had brought and said, 'Can you bring other newspapers? These are all the same...'

Party time

It was my birthday recently and my compound neighbours helped celebrate. There was also a Big Surprise planned, although it didn't quite come together in time so we had to re-stage it after the event. But it was worth it!

Jess had sent me a message earlier in the week: 'Will you fly over the house this afternoon? If yes I'll try listen out and we will come wave at you!' Little did I know, she had prepared a big sign (a painted message on a bedsheet acquired from one of the many local second-hand stores) and in the three days leading up to my birthday had been laying it out on the grass. However, my flight routes were all in the opposite direction, so she had to resort to Plan B, which was to ask other pilots to take a picture when they flew overhead. A couple of them tried but the pictures were blurry or from the wrong angle. So then she resorted to Plan C, which meant that I was greeted on the morning of my birthday with this view:

That day we got the compound ready for an ice cream sundae bar karaoke evening!

Kids and adults alike are excited about ice cream

Al fresco karaoke

 

On the Monday I was flying a route that would definitely take me over town. So Jess put the sign out one more time...

It was worth the wait!

Timber!

Recently I was scheduled to fly 950 kg of building supplies from Hagen to Wanikipa airstrip. It sounds pretty straightforward - after all, I regularly fly over 1000 kg of 2-minute noodles to Simbai and 1000 kg of coffee back to Hagen. However, it turned out not to be that simple, because the building supplies were long lengths of timber that filled the cabin.

The ground staff had nearly finished loading the plane and I noticed it seemed to be sitting quite tail low. I quickly calculated the weight and balance and sure enough, the centre of gravity was outside the aft limit.

If the centre of gravity is too far aft, the pilot can lose control of the aircraft. I didn't want that to happen! Since there wasn't any way of redistributing the weight, the only way to move the centre of gravity forward was to put ballast in the front pod and offload an equivalent weight of timber. 80 kg was enough.

During and immediately after the take-off I tested the control effectiveness. It was less than usual (no surprise) but enough to continue safely.

The wood will be used to build an extension to the health centre in Wanikipa. Lots of people pitched in to help unload the plane and carry the timber to the village.

Offloading the timber

Everyone joined in to help - even the kids!

Advanced airstrip training (AAT)

I spent the last week in Goroka for my long-awaited advanced airstrip training course. Now, having completed it, I'm glad it wasn't scheduled any earlier - it was quite intense! The goal of the course was to develop the skills, confidence and precision to be able to land on short airstrips (precision), steep airstrips (technique) and others with challenging circuits or surface conditions (e.g. slippery).

The Goroka base services a number of such airstrips, and over the course of the 3 1/2 days we visited 14 different strips. They got progressively shorter, steeper, and slipperier... here are some stats:

(For reference, the steep sections of Transmission Gully or Ngauranga Gorge are about 8% slope)

Day 1:
Ground lesson
Pyarulama - 503 m, 10.0% slope, visual illusions with surrounding terrain
Yenkisa - 451 m, 9.1% slope, somewhat confined circuit

Day 2:
Marawaka - 900 m, 4.0% slope, confined circuit. This was a 'correlation exercise' meaning I didn't get to look at the airstrip chart but had to figure out the dimensions of the airstrip and how I was going to land there myself
Simogu - 487 m, 8.4% slope, can be slippery
Asinuwa - 551 m, 4.9% slope, visual illusions
Sindeni - 560 m, 6.3% slope, wind can be challenging
Ande - 482 m, 8.0% slope, wind can be challenging (just on the other side of the valley from Sindeni!)
Andakombe - 505 m, 9.0% slope
Manu - 705 m, 4.5% slope, wet and slippery when we visited

Day 3:
Wuyabo - 555 m, 2.8% slope, i.e. short and flat
Wonenara - 410 m, 9.7% slope, very unusual circuit - another correlation exercise
Owena - 380 m, 12.5% slope - the shortest and steepest so far!

Day 4:
Maimafu - 460 m, 13.0% slope, with slope varying from 5% to 16% in places, and very slippery to boot
Yambaitok - 515 m, 1.1% slope, unusual circuit and tricky wind (as well as being short and flat)
Gebrau - 530 m, 12.1% slope
Dusin - 441 m, 9.0% slope

 

I took some photos, and although they really don't do these places justice, here they are:

With training pilot Brad at Sindeni. Ande, our next destination,
is visible in the background (just above my head)

Owena (380 m, 12.5% slope) from the air

Owena from the ground

Maimafu (460 m, 13.0 slope) from the air

Maimafu from the ground

A story about my experience was published on the MAF PNG website.