HGFA Skysailor Magazine

SKY SAILOR 39 November | December 2018 P erth is known for its suburban sprawl, but to see it happening along the city’s coastline is something else. Only 30 years ago, the northern edge of suburbia was 35km from the CBD – now it’s 50km. Open countryside is being consumed at the rate of half a kilometre per year. Environmentalists mourn this, and yet another consequence has been the closure of treasured coastal flying sites. One after another, our sites have been shut and pilots forced to drive further and further up the coast to those sites not yet lost. Finally, three of us paraglider pilots decided we’d take a stand. We’d defend our last all-purpose fly- ing site located at Quinns Beach − the only remain- ing Perth site for pilots of all levels of qualification and for both, paragliding and hang gliding. Quinns had been a dune site for more than 30 years. Not a single untoward incident has occurred, and the beach users love to watch us. Paraglider pilots take off from the beach and hang glider pilots use a scrubby hill at the northern end of the beach as a launch. Our HG pilots were happy in their scrub, but PG pilots faced the growing risk that the use of the beach would be banned in the name of ‘dune conservation’ and to prevent erosion. Therefore, our plan was to obtain a formal licence for a high-quality take-off site overlooking the beach which could be used for all flying. Our request to the local council languished in the corridors of power for several years. It is hard to conceive just how much bureaucracy is entailed in a licence for 100 square metres of untended land, and how much our morale rose and fell with every setback our request encountered along the way. Eventually, a young planning officer took up our cause. Perhaps it was her ambition to one day pursue an aviation career that motivated her? With painstaking determination, she steered our application through all objections and complications. With our final presentation to the full council of elected members, we won. All that remained was for a dozen keen pilots to clear the site, lay the salvaged bowling green carpet, erect signs and a gate, and install a park bench. This work was completed in September this year, exactly six years after our first approach to the council. Perth now has an exciting new launch which is already heavily used. Much of the beach take-off activity has moved to the hill, which may postpone the day we lose the beach entirely. As one of our senior pilots observed: “The importance of this is immense for the sport. This tags the site for many years to come and also sets a permanent record in the council.” It took six years of negotiations with a local council to win approval for a new flying site in Perth. by David Leith One of the pilots brought his Bobcat to help clear and prep the site The covering material was secured with steel pins Small but beautiful – testing the air at the new launch Pilots Peter Kovesi and Brad Segers enjoy the view from the new viewing bench The team have a beer to celebrate the completed job Signage with site specific rules Protecting Quinns