Today is Saturday 2nd April, 2011 and we are off on a one day, air tour of Lake Eyre. But it has been a long time in the planning. We first heard about this tour, run by Graham and Deb Reid from TravelWest in Charleville, in April 2010, during our driving tour of western New South Wales. As fate would have it, we popped into an artist studio on the outskirts of Bourke and got chatting to owner/artist Jenny Greentree. Jenny had just done this tour and she was rapted about the whole experience. She had already started doing a few paintings based on what she had observed. The photos she showed us were spectacular and her paintings seemed to have captured something ethereal in the character of Lake Eyre.
In early 2010, our original plan had been to drive to Lake Eyre, but for a variety of reasons this trip had been truncated into the "Western New South Wales" tour to Broken Hill, Lightening Ridge and many of the other iconic towns of Australian folklore and history. You can read all about this tour at our blog called "In Search of Art in the Aussie Outback" (http://aussieoutbackart.blogspot.com/)
With no time to fit the Lake Eyre air tour into 2010, we contacted Graham and Deb as soon as we got back from Europe in November 2010 to make sure we could get on board, before we again hit the road to Europe in mid-May 2011.
So, after 9 email exchanges and the payment of what seemed like a considerable amount of money; although it must be said that we have decided that life is too short to worry too much about money, we find ourselves in the fast filling Skytrans departure lounge.
The plane is a Dash 8, a small, twin engined prop-jet with seating for 35 passengers. The seating configuration is 2 + 2 so we have one window seat and one isle seat. Jenelle has the window. We are in the exit row which is even better. In row 4 we are directly under the wing with a pretty good view apart from the propeller which is sightly forward of us.
We take off on time and climb into the cool clear morning over Brisbane and head west...
We are soon cruising past Toowoomba, unpacking our breakfast of yummy banana pancakes, yogurt, fresh fruit and coffee...
Graham, our guide, normally doesn't join the tour until Charleville where he and his wife Deb are based, however today he is with us from the start. As we zoom along above the patchwork world that is the Darling Downs, Graham gives us an introduction to the day's adventures that await...
Further out on the Downs the patchwork fields become sublime...
Slowly black soil cultivation gives way to red soil grazing the further west we fly...
Then into the Mugla country with trees as far as the eye can see...
As we come into land at Charleville we get a close up view of the Mulga trees which look for all the world like olive trees from up here...
Then as if from out of nowhere, in this expanse of mulga, we find the wide, regimented streets of Charleville...
We land at the incredibly historic Charleville Airport to refuel, pick up a few more passengers and to our total amazement (at this stage) a complete change of crew (2 pilots and stewardess)...
While the plane is refueled we bone up on the history of Charleville airport. It was from here at 5.30am on the 2nd November, 1922 that the very first QANTAS air mail service began. Qantas had been eking outing a living doing joy flights, but it was the commencement of air mail services and a few years later the introduction of scheduled passenger services that laid the solid foundation for the flying kangaroo. And as they say, "the rest is history"...
The airport has many other interesting claims to fame mostly associated with the pioneering years of aviation and air travel...
And there could be no history without some reference to that other icon of Australian aviation and outback survival than the "Flying Doctor". This monument commemorates 50 years of Flying Doctor service to Charleville...
A full tank of Av-gas, a new crew, and it's "all aboard"; next destination, Birdsville...
