SAFA Skysailor Magazine

10 SKY SAILOR March | April 2020 does prickles better than most. During the drive home, Pistol found a tick on his person so the Car 1 kiwis had a quick tick lesson which was followed by a personal scan outside the pub. Despite signifi- cantly lowering dusk travel speed, Car 2 intersected with a suicidal kangaroo which unfortunately came off almost dead. At times like these we’re thankful to have someone from the Czech Republic who can expediently resolve the situation. Bingo, next day was NW-ish again with a tickle more W, so we set off toward a Stanhope turnpoint. Geoff didn’t suffer FOMO for too long after take-off as he was semi-pooped from the day before and landed close to Dalby. While the first 95km was reasonably tree free, the balance of the flight has regular-ish landings between a significant number of trees. At 145km out, I left the 9,800ft cloudbase at 2:30pm with tasty looking clouds ahead and just under 30km from a 173km PB. While I stopped myself from the thought, it looked all on for young and old. However, the final elongated glide, drifting in bugger all lower down, meant the elevated ground at Stanhope came up to greet me, again 10km short of a PB. A pleasant landing ensued amongst hundreds of multi-coloured shade cloth structures. Tom had flown faster and cracked another PB with 205km on the other side of Stanthorpe and his first time over 200km. Who knew that day’s last retrieve would be such a holiday highlight? Viv hadn’t sent a landing loca- tion, but we did have his last yet unlikely WhatsApp live location somewhere in the middle of hilly six finger country. With nothing better to go on, we approached the start of the valley and the scene was what I’d imagined the apocalypse will look like: A valley filled with one hang glider, fire, smoke, gust fronts, trees bending in half, hills, snakes, ants, rain, lightening and shit flying across the road, likely on its way to kill one of the unlucky few cattle on the property. Seriously, what more could you ask from a holiday? After quite a few winding k’s, and speculation regarding retrieve options, we spotted a few vehicle lights heading our away not far short of the fires. The vehicles stopped and after a short introduction out popped Viv from the rear vehicle. Earlier consensus had been that we weren’t going to find him for a few hours yet, so our reunification was a huge relief for both parties. Viv had achieved both feet hitting the underside of the sail and a 263km flight that wouldn’t be bettered that week. Viv was picked up by locals trying to save a house from the fire and their first question was, “Are you a vegan?” Viv’s non-vegan credentials couldn’t be questioned, no doubt he had been personally responsible at some stage for chicken they had eaten. Strange as that question may seem to outsiders, we’d also been asked this question during a retrieve at the Big Air. Vegan protesters have been active in Queensland and while I’m not frightened of a vegetable, however, I can understand how protesters coupled with the desperate state of the land could lead a farmer to be rather sensitive on this topic. A digression: At one pub, I ordered the roast vegies and was told these weren’t available. A second attempt to order the salad ended the same way and before I could ask about the last vege menu option, the person serving quickly blurted out that was also not available. After studiously managing to avoid this delicacy in every Australian pub menu over the years, when in Rome… just “Give me the Chicken Parma!” The road back home from Viv’s landing was far from line of sight and was expertly piloted by Trevor in Viv’s Nissan ute. Doggy had an opinion about the ute. While the kiwis would not have a word said against this vehicle, although by a few others it may be considered a snugger version than a Venus fly trap; easy to get into, less than roomy, and very hard to exit. By the time midnight rolled around, Doggy had regularly expanded on this theme and with another hour and a half in prospect, Trevor put a stop to it. Doggy did not take up Trevor’s kind offer of alighting the vehicle immediately so he could ring Richard who would come and pick him up god knows where in the Doggy mobile. When the following day broke, Nick Purcell had arrived for his first flight since the Big Air Elbow- maggedon but the forecast didn’t look as tasty as previous days so a few of us were easily convinced to take a rest day. Nick, Geoff and Viv flew. Nick had a tidy flight after an eight-month break, while Viv had the tug rope break on him so he returned to drop it back to the airstrip. This left Geoff to float around a 60km triangle at 10,000ft getting low a few times, down to 7,500ft. Day 5 was a ditto day, NW with an Ashford turnpoint and Pistol Pete rejoined us. Viv, Tom and Geoff landed in different places, but all did 110km. The balance of the field flew between 17 and 69km. My highlight was of a double bird strike – they were both so close and so loud, I couldn’t hear the bloody vario. I unfortunately repeated the behaviour from two days previous with a 9,500ft 2:45pm cloudbase departure 25km short of a PB with tasty clouds ahead, and again landed 10km short. If Viv’s retrieve from two days prior was the apocalypse, this was post-apocalyptic. When the car arrived at Tom’s posted landing spot, they saw a shimmering Czech Jesus hovering across the paddock with each footstep increasing the cloud of dust surrounding him. Whilst sorting out my landing paddock in the forest from the air, the ones beside the road had thousands of dead gums lying flat at reasonably close spacings. I took the medically appropriate paddock, but it was not close to the road. I thought we’d seen barren previously, but this place could have been entered into the world championships. It appeared to be cultivating gravel, kangaroos, a large number of big ant mounds, regular scatterings of cattle bones with the odd sheep and one head of cattle. The sheep appeared to be kept alive by cotton seed feed. I carried the glider 250m to where I prayed the car could access. I propped it up against a tree to I’ll Be Back The man is a genius: Tom’s soon to be cold in-flight grapes You too would be this happy if you finally got a piss after seven hours – Geoff in NSW, 238km from Dalby