Happy Days

This job only gets better!  I have been to so many new places this month, and all across the country, even overnighting in Perth and flying to Broome.  I have met Interesting People in business class, and had time to stop and smell the roses.  I’ve climbed mountain after mountain and seen more of Australia from above than I ever hoped to see.

Yesterday, I got called in to go to Hamilton Island to ferry an aircraft out, and I leapt at the chance.  Now that I’m back in Canberra (where we ferried it), it is -1C currently and I am missing the tropical sunshine and beaches we momentarily encountered.

The moment you step foot outside the terminal you are at the water, the ferries dock here and the only road transport is by golf cart.  I wanted to go explore, but apparently we were there to work.  

The actual runway is built into the bay, with vividly blue water stretching into infinity.

The hill is where most of the holiday homes are, and where I wish I were right now.  

We had to wait a couple of hours for the engineer to fix our aircraft, but we didn’t have time to visit the island as we had planning and ballast to arrange.  And of course, they didn’t have any ballast.  The solution?  Send the boys down to the beach with shovels and hessian sacks, and fill ‘me up with 400kg of sand.  Yep.  I asked if they had any buckets and spades so we could pretend to have a beach on board on the flight home, but unfortunately they were all out.

And then of course, flying home we had another sunset all to ourselves.

From 37,000’ you can even see the gentle curvature of the earth.  

This, this is why I do it.  I’ve found my passion again and nothing so far has managed to wipe the smile off my face.