Biloela, QLD, Australia - A different perspective.

[p1michaud]

I know that this is an Overlanding oriented forum but somtimes a new perspective freshens things up a bit...

Over the last 4 months, I've been working away from my Australian home base of Brisbane in a place called Biloela. It's roughly 600 Km North of Brisbane. I've been working at a power plant overhaulling one of the units. It's been a long, challenging and even frustrating project however I've been fortunate enough to meet some amazing people while working here. Here's where this story merges with overlanding. By living, working and integrating into the community we’ve met some fantastic people and discovered their passion.

In this case, Len is passionate about flying and I was eager to listen to his story. Every now and then I'd stop by his desk and aske a few questions. Len and I got along very well and the more we chatted, the more he shared. As a youngster he started going to Smokey Creek where he became facinated with flying. Turns out Len has built a few planes in his life. He currently owns two of them and flies them as often as he can.

I told len that Martha was coming for a visit. He offered to take us for a fly if the weather conditions were right. So it was Friday evening when Martha and I received a late night voice mail from a co-worker of mine who knows Len and I to say: "If you and Martha want to go out, show up at Smoky Creek arround 8:00 am tomorrow, Len's going out for a fly arround". :sombrero: Was this really happening?

So on Saturday morning, off we go to Smokey Creek. This place was a beautiful property, 5000 acres, cattle, two runways one is 2.4 Km long and the other is 1.8 Km long.

The Smoky Creek hangar...

Here the owner Kevin is chasing the cattle off the runway in his trusty 70 Series Landcruiser complete with his two dogs riding shotgun.

To be continued...

 

[p1michaud]

Sharing his passion...

Once we said hi, it was straight to work. We had to pull our eploring device out from the hangar and complete the pre flight checks. For about 30 minutes we went over every aspect of the plane. Len built this plane from scratch over a period of seven years. Len's a perfectionist and his work clearly shows it. While Len was doing the pre-flight checks, he also shared his knowledge of flying and tid bits of information about his plane: "Spirit of Smokey Creek". A beautiful piece of machinery. Now I've got a soft spot for just about every thing that moves. If it's mechanical, I'm interested guess that's why I became a Mechanical Engineer.

Me posing next to the Spirit of Smokey Creek:

I wish we had taken more photos of the take off but truth be told I was too focussed on listening to Len and his words of advice and caution as we bumped along the runway avoiding cow patties...

As we took off, what a wonderful and exciting feeling. I was really getting to see this beautiful country from a different perspective and what a thrill. I did snap a few photos as were flying.

Looking at the horizon.

Where I work.

The property complete with landing strips.

It was 45 minutes of joy. Martha was next. Here she is getting in the plane. You can see that we were not 100% successful in avoiding all cow patties...

Some of the pictures she took. The coal mine.

The road to get to the air field.

More to come...