More Oz flying: Camden-Albury

[kookabat]

You may remember a short YouTube video I made almost a year ago (I posted it [url=http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=45404]on the forum here[/url]) from a tour in a 182 of some of the ports that the airline I work for flies to. I thought we'd give it another go... so I grabbed the same C182 and a colleage of mine and away we went...

We were originally planning to hit the North Coast (Taree/Grafton/Ballina) but the forecast on Sunday morning was not real flash for those areas. It was significantly better if we headed south west - so some last-minute planning was required. Here's Chris, who was in Crewing but who I'm now training in Ops at Rex (hence we have the same days off at the moment - a good excuse to go flying), doing some of the planning:
[im[imgtp://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII006.jpg[/img]

The departure from Camden was a little interesting but we found a few holes and ended up VFR on top:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII010.jpg[/img]

It's really dry out this way at the moment. Here's the town of Gundagai, famous for the dog that s(h)at on a tuckerbox:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII012.jpg[/img]

By this point the cloud had disappeared (it was all, as usual, hanging around the ranges west of Sydney) but it was rather hazy. The haze got worse as we went further south - it was of course bushfire smoke from those Victorian fires which are still burning.

Here we are on the ground at Wagga...
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII021.jpg[/img]

...where a couple of Rex flights were coming in and out:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII026.jpg[/img]

Rex was created when a Singaporean consortium bought out the two regional subsidiaries of Ansett after the latter went under in 2002. Hazelton and Kendell Airlines both flew Saabs (and Metros) and the two route networks were complimentary to each other. You can still see reminders of the company's heritage, as here on the Wagga hangar wall:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII032.jpg[/img]

Wagga airport looks something like this:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII042.jpg[/img]

Leg Two was to Griffith, via Narranderra. Both are Rex ports. By this time the haze was pretty bad:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII047.jpg[/img]

We wanted to stop in to NRA but the timing wasn't right so noone from Rex would have been on the ground there. So we contented ourselves with flying over it instead. See the grass cross strip, that's more of a 'dead grass' strip??
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII050.jpg[/img]

Heaps of fields of this sort of stuff, which I think are grape vines:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII053.jpg[/img]

It's even drier out this way. Here's Griffith Airport - they've had some very warm (47 degrees) days out here recently, and combined with having the shortest runway on the network there have been some fairly significant restrictions on payload out of here for the Saabs:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII056.jpg[/img]
They are extending the runway (the work site is just visible on the left-hand edge of the runway in that photo) but this of course has meant a 200m reduction while they do the work, and even more capacity constraints...

It's a very small terminal at Griffith and it would be easily overcrowded there for more than one flight at a time (which does happen):
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII066.jpg[/img]

Here's BMX again with the Saab on the ground behind it:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII068.jpg[/img]

We tracked back via Narranderra again, then set course for Albury. Here's that airport from a little way out:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII078.jpg[/img]

Albury is one of the bigger country airports that Rex flies to. They also have services from QantasLink (Q400s) and Virgin Blue (E-jets). It is a Class D towered airport:
[img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/Tour%20de%20Rex%20MkII/09Feb-TourdeRexII087.jpg[/img]

We spent the night in Albury (the pub near the hotel we stayed at does a very nice steak) and carried on in the morning - which will be the subject of another post, this one's getting a bit long!

[AndyR]

Interesting read and some good photo's. Cheers!

[kookabat]

[/imgmg:370d9f[img

[SpeedBird]

Great report kookabat! Love the pictures, brings back memories when I was in Australia... Hope to return one day!

Safe Flying.

[QDMQDMQDM]

Please can we have the story about the dog that shat on the tuckerbox? It looks like the only attraction for Gandagai, so it had better be good.

[kookabat]

Ahh Gundagai... actually a pretty little town. There was an Irish music festival there last year that I was at and it was a superb setting for it. Having said that of course, dunno if I could live there...

As for that dog, it's from a very old song. Here's the story:

[quote='http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/trevor.lucas/songs/fivemilesfromgundagai.html']This celebrated and much commented song has its mysteries. It seems to have bred countless variants, some far-fetched, some close to the “original” version published by Jack Moses in his Beyond the City Gates remembered from his travels as a whiskey salesman in the bush some fifty years previously. Perhaps the grandfather of the song is Bill the Bullocky, another Gundagai-dog epic whose words gained currency in the bush in the late 1850s, through being printed on a matchbox. [...]
The bullock-driver with his wagon piled high with wool-bales, his eight or ten yoke of oxen, his long whip and fluent oaths, was eminent among the oldtime bushman. [...]
One of the monuments of Australian folklore is the bullock teamsters' song about the dog that “shat” in the tucker-box five miles from Gundagai. On November 28, 1932, the Rt. Hon. J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia, unveiled a statue to this redoubtable dog at the point where O'Brien's Creek crosses the main Gundagai Road, the site of an oldtime bullockies' camping-ground. Dog and tucker-box are set on a plinth. [...] A dog souvenir shop is nearby, and the post-office puts on the local letters a special dog postmark. Such is fame in Australia.

[b]Lyrics[/b]
[i]I'm used to punchin' bullock teams across the hills and plains.
I've teamed outback for forty years through bleedin' hail and rain.
I've lived a lot of troubles down, without a bloomin' lie,
But I can't forget what happened just five miles from Gundagai.

'Twas getting dark, the team got bored, the axle snapped in two.
I lost me matches and me pipe, so what was I to do?
The rain it was coming on, and hungry too was I,
And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.

Some blokes I know have stacks of luck, no matter where they fall,
But there was I, Lord love a duck, no bloody luck at all.
I couldn't heat a pot of tea or keep me trousers dry,
And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.

Now, I can forgive the bleedin' team, I can forgive the rain.
I can forgive the damp and cold and go through it again.
I can forgive the rotten luck, but 'ang me till I die,
I can't forgive that bloody dog, five miles from Gundagai[/i][/quote]


Or something like that!!

[Xoxon]

Nice one champ - I gotta say, as an Ozzie in London, that is SO funny where you say "the haze was getting pretty bad by this point" above a shot of conditions so good that they only appear about twice a year here.

[Del197]

Another version

Part of Bowyang Yorke's poem about Bullocky Bill:
As I was coming down Conroy's Gap,
I heard a maiden cry;
'There goes Bill the Bullocky,
He's bound for Gundagai.
A better poor old beggar
Never earnt an honest crust,
A better poor old beggar
Never drug a whip through dust.'
His team got bogged at the nine mile creek,
Bill lashed and swore and cried;
'If Nobby don't get me out of this,
I'll tattoo his bloody hide.'
But Nobby strained and broke the yoke,
And poked out the leader's eye;
Then the dog sat on the Tucker Box
Nine miles from Gundagai.


Got a photo of the dog on the box but cant seem to get it to paste

If ever in Goulburn I can reccomend the ex servicemens club next to the park. clean good service and large portions reasonably priced.

Any fishermen out there .Head for Woolongong .