Australia – Page 2 – Kieran Campbell

24 May 2010

Tasmania Day 8: Dossing About Round Huonville

I was a bit surprised to wake up slightly hungover from the meal and pints from last night, so it was yet another slow start to a day for me. My GPS logger had been playing up ever since we got to Tassie and had got to the point where it just wouldn’t stay on unless it was on charge – I’d been relying on it for the past 5 months to help me figure out where all those random out-the-window shots and the likes had been taken when I look back on them later so it was quite annoying to be faced with having to try to make some conscious effort to remember where I take all my photos.

Lymington?

It was a bit of a short visit to Huonville for David, our Israeli cycling friend, as he had to resume his cycle tour today, so we drove back to Hobart with him then took a more scenic drive back down the coast courtesy of Roy. Roy and Liz had been looking for somewhere to build their own home near Huonville so we took a detour up a farm track into a small and secluded valley to check out a site that Roy was keen on getting. Without my GPS working I can even remember exactly where it was..

That was about all we did in what turned into a very cruise-y day, finished up with Kevin and I cooking our hosts a curry for tea, as way of thanks for having us staying with them. Seeing as we hadn’t done much, and there was still plenty to explore south of Huonville, we gladly accepted their offer to stay another night and continue our streak of hot-morning-showers, and settled into a night filled with Baileys, whiskey and yet more shit-head.

24 May 2010

Tasmania Day 7: Skipping Bail for the Beach

Fortescue Bay

Breaking out of the rich atmosphere of the tent – rich from the three of us having nachos, cheese and dip, with about half a bottle of tabasco added, before going to sleep – we took stock of our surroundings that we’d stumbled into the night before. We really had just driven down some side forest track and happened upon a part wide enough to get away with pitching a tent on. Still as intent on seeing Fortescue Bay as we were on not paying to get in, we drove back up to the park boundary and walked in the half-kilometre to the camp-ground and beach. The bay is well sheltered and quite idyllic, nothing to rave about at least from our viewpoint, but definitely worth chilling out on for an hour while we woke up.

Port Arthur

On to Port Arthur, we were a bit disappointed to find that, although being clearly marked on the map as a town, it was completely fenced off and the only thing we could do for free was look over part of the site from a lookout round the side of the visitor centre. It was something like $17 for basic entry, which I’d probably pay if I went back, but the group consensus – after taking in the view for a while and wondering if we could get away with jumping the fence at the lookout – was there were better things to do with our day.

Following the main road round the peninsula, we’d heard that Roaring Beach had some good surf, so we turned off west at Nubeena to check it out. Not deterred by the suitably roaring, and nippy, wind Kevin and I jumped in while David exercised better judgement and took photos from a distance. The rip was way too much for me, so after spending a few minutes almost hopelessly trying to get back to shore – even though I was only waist deep in the water – I bailed out, while Kevin, typically, swam so far out I couldn’t see him and assumed we’d be called the SES in.

Off to the Beach

That pretty much summed up our time on the historic Tasman Peninsula before we headed back through Hobart, once again not really bothering to explore the place, only stopping so David could get his glasses fixed, while we made ourselves look like bums playing shit-head on the street. Kevin made friends with a couple how now live in Tassie, when he worked in a restaurant back in Perth, and after a week of uncivilised camping it was the perfect time to call in on them and crash in a proper house again, so that evening, we arrived in Huonville, an hour or so south of Hobart, and met Roy and Liz. For a temporary home while they find their dream spot on the island, their pad was pretty idyllic, set up the valley just outside town, looking over a sweeping bend in the Huon River, not that we really cared though, we were meeting up with some very welcoming people, not sleeping in a tent or a car for the night, and, most importantly, would have a hot shower for the first time in a week!

13 May 2010

This Month, I’m a Farmer

It’s a week since I got to Moree and started my ‘ideal’ job – at least as far as jobs go that I can do to fulfil my working holiday visa requirements. I’m staying on a 7000 acre farm 50km north of Moree, mainly doing gps tractor driving by day and very little by night as, being the sole employee of the farmer, I’ve got the workers’ quarters all to myself. Now as much as I quite like my own company from time to time and would happily go off for a hike into the hills or the likes and lose myself for a few days, what I’m faced with here is possibly over a month of living in solitude apart from seeing the farmer, who’s leadership skills haven’t left me exactly warming to him.

I’ll take a step back for a moment, as it’s a bit of leap for an I.T. guy to be saying he’s now taken on the role of hermit-come-farmer, and recap how I got here. Back in August I arrived in Australia on a working holiday visa, giving me a year in the country with basically no restrictions: great. The government also offers the visa for a second year to those who’ve used their first year visa, but on the condition that they’ve done 3 months (or 88 days if not all done with one employer) of farm, fishing, mining or construction work, in a regional postcode area. Now, I like to keep my options open and when I got to Australia, although I had no idea if I even would want to stay for one year, I was sure that if I did any work I’d make it count towards the second year, as hey, maybe I’d really want it after all. So, heading up the west coast, I applied for a tractor driving job – possibly the easiest type of farm work I could think of, and I have the advantage of actually having driven tractors on the farm beside my house back home – but with no luck and ended up picking mangoes in the Northern Territory through November. Down in Victoria, a few months later, I picked up some work at a berry farm, taking me up to a total of 31 days knocked off for the visa. Great, but after struggling to drag myself out of Bright for almost 3 months, I was left with a little over 3 months to find 47 days work in a country where I’d heard plenty stories about backpackers finding it hard to get work. Not one to be rushed, I dossed about in Sydney for a couple of days then checked on the government’s harvest work website, with an eye to applying for the job with the longest life expectancy and low-and-behold, posted that day, is a tractor-driving job in Moree.

New Toy

So, here I am. Meeting the farmer off the train at Moree, I was getting quite excited by the figures I was hearing: a 400hp tractor – sounds fun – and a 7000 acre farm – well I know roughly how big a 20 acre field is but my imagination doesn’t really extend over a few hundred acres, so wow. Turns out it’s about 12 square miles, so if I climb the hill behind my house, most of the land I see would be part of this farm. Anyway, the first few days were pretty mundane, fixing up bits of the 18m wide sowing machine, tightening bolts, greasing bearings, cleaning up grain from the silos, that sort of thing. Mundane as it was, I could deal with that, but with by far the worst boss I’ve ever served under, I was already wondering whether I’d last much more than a week before I cracked under his constant questioning of why I didn’t do this, hadn’t done that, didn’t know how to do that, hadn’t done that quicker etc. Luckily, the forth day saw us taking the tractor and sowing machine out to the field and making a start at sowing wheat.

The reason I really wanted this job was, quite frankly, because I’m lazy. I’ve done a month of mango picking, going home with aching muscles and sore feet every day and having no time for anything between finishing eating and going to bed, so sitting on my arse in a tractor all day, and being paid a little more than I was for both the mangoes and the berry farm sounds great. And it gets better: the tractor has a gps unit that controls the steering of the tractor as it sows lengths of the field, so all I have to do is turn it at end of each row and take over briefly whenever there are trees on a row. My job is vaguely comparable to when I worked in I.T.: I sit on a chair, occasionally put my feet up when the boss isn’t looking, can listen to music, stare at a couple of computer screens occasionally, stare out the window, and every 10 minutes or do some work!

Of course the difference with my I.T. jobs is, if I was sitting on the chair doing nothing it was procrastination, whereas in the tractor, it’s because there’s nothing to do apart from look out the window to make sure the 10 tons of machinery and grain I’m towing is still there. It is a boring job, but so long as it’s boring I’m not going to whinge as I’m sure I’m earning more than a lot of people who are working a lot harder than me, and it’s bad enough being in that situation without being ungrateful for it. But, the field that I’ve been sowing for the past 4 days (yup, it’s over half a mile wide and well over a mile long) will be done tomorrow and if that means I’m back to being in the firing line of more abuse from the boss, then maybe my time as a tractor-driver will once again start to look short-lived, and maybe this month I’ll have the chance to be something other than this, maybe a fruit-picker again, or maybe just a backpacker for a while.

9 May 2010

Tasmania Day 6: Passing the Capital & Heading to Prison

Pirates Bay

Feeling pretty crap from what was the worst night’s sleep ever, we got to the information centre at the head of the Freycinet Peninsula to find the weather wasn’t looking that great. We’d planned on doing the overnight hike round the peninsula, which meant camping somewhere near the south end, so possible rain and strong winds didn’t combine to make an attractive forecast. Ditching that plan, but at least much better informed about what we could do on the peninsula thanks to the information centre, we steamed on to Hobart to meet our Israeli friend David, who also was circumnavigating the island, but on two wheels, with no engine.

Almost completely ignoring the capital, we caught up with David, got some supplies and tried to leave Hobart. That was easier said than done as, once over the bridge, I assumed what seemed like a fairly sensible position in the left lane of the highway, only to find that after a corner there were signs saying this lane slipped off the main route and, with no time to change lane, then no sign of a slip road back on, I ended up driving back across the bridge, then back across again, just to leave the city. Once again, Australian roads: I despair.

Tasman Idyll

Heading towards the famous and, by white Australian standards, historical penal colony of Port Arthur, we took a detour just before entering the domain of convicts at Eaglehawk Neck to see the Tessellated Pavement and check out a lookout over Pirates Bay and Eaglehawk Neck the spit of land that we’d cross to enter the peninsula. After reading the information on how the cracked formation of the ‘pavement’ – a flat area of rock on a beach – formed, I understand how the cracks formed but still don’t really know why they make a uniform grid. Anyway, passing Eaglehawk Neck didn’t have quite the feel of a no-man’s land marking the entry to what was once the worst prison you could end up at in the British Empire, as we couldn’t see the sea that was so close to us on both sides for the thick bush.

Just inside the peninsula, we checked out the Tasman Arch, Devil’s Kitchen, and Tasman Blowhole: all fairly impressive rock formations carved out by the sea. Definitely in need of a shower again, Fortescue Bay looked promising, although quite far down some unsealed roads, with a camp site and showers. Determined not to pay anything for washing or sleeping though, we sneaked into the campground, had a hypothermia-inducing shower (hot water is available, at a price) then drove back out beyond the limit of the national park and camped by the side of some obscure forest track for the night.

8 May 2010

Tasmania Day 5: Douglas-Apsley & Bicheno

Bay of Lagoons

Sleeping in the car overnight disposed of our usual morning routine: me putting off getting up for an hour, spending the next couple of hours trying to get Kevin up before the morning was over, then spending the next half hour packing the tent and stuff back in the car. Even if our sleep hadn’t been comfortable, it felt quite novel to wake up and then be ready to drive off 5 minutes later.

Heading south towards the Freycinet Peninsula, we stopped in by Douglas-Apsley National Park and did a 2.7km trail that we thought led to some amazing falls. After walking what felt like at least 2.7km we came back upon the river we’d crossed earlier, except this part was faster, deeper and looked a lot less fun to cross. If there was anything of interest on the other side, maybe I’ll never know, but when we got back to the carpark and re-interrogated the map, we realised the falls were on a different track that would take days to hike. The best view we got was from a lookout that was closed because of landslip, overlooking the bend in river where the shallow river-crossing is.

Bicheno Bay

Bicheno, a small town with a beautiful bay and beach, was annoying as it seemed devoid of free bbqs – something we’d come to rely on to save us using all our camping gas in a couple of days – leaving us hopelessly trying to fry all the stuff we’d bought for a bbq on a useless frying pan, perched aloft a pitiful stove. We eventually ate and retired to the beach for the rest of the afternoon, although the water wasn’t really warm enough for my liking for a swim. It wasn’t far off Coral Bay for beauty though, with clear water and fish swimming right up to shore.

Intending on hitting the Freycinet Peninsula next morning, we took the Coles Bay road and parked up at the River and Rocks campground, not far from the town. I had a seemingly brilliant idea that I would try sleeping across the back seat of the car as I really didn’t like trying to sleep on the almost-but-not-quite-flat front-seats of the car. Doing this, though, meant Kevin couldn’t get his seat quite as flat as normal, and sleeping in the back seat wasn’t nearly as comfortable as hoped, so both had a shocking night’s sleep.

6 May 2010

Back to Backpacking

Porepunkah Fall

May: winter is definitely on it’s way, the soaring days are few and far between, I’ve quit my brewery job, and the hostel is closing up so Greg and Leanne can have a holiday in a few weeks. It’s time to ease myself back into backpacking, but it’s been so long, I’ve had the same bed in the same room, with the same cosy lounge, kitchen and verandah for so long that Bright really feels like home. It’s Saturday, 1st May and I’ve already pushed back my departure date from Wednesday to Friday, then upon hearing today would be a good flying day and that Kieran Schultz was coming down, finally Saturday.

We head up to Mystic, I’ve had 2 runs up this hill committed to thinking they would be my last, but I can’t quite get away. The wind is strong, almost too strong, but that’s fine: it’ll be a slightly more demanding flight than what I’m used to, and I’ll get to practise my reverse-launch technique again. In the air, the ridge-lift is good and I manage to float down towards the paddock then crawl right back over launch a couple of times until, just before an hour’s airtime, I can’t maintain height any longer and finish off what might, again, be my last flight in Bright, taking a moment to sit back and soak in the beauty of the Wandiligong valley from the air one last time. We end up hanging around with Ted and Bret as they take this month’s would-be pilot out to Reeds for their first bit of ground-handling, and it seems like a good idea to get as much practice at my forward launches as possible as they’ve been a bit shakey. Once the wind has died down we get one last sled run from Mystic – this one spent not trying to fly, just sitting back, hands stretched out, taking in every last second of the smooth glide down to the paddock, and then it was done: I was really finished flying in Bright.

Base view

Bright is the first place in Australia that’s made me sad to leave as I’ve made a few friends here who I honestly hope I’ll see again, not that I’m forgetting some people from before Bright who I plan to meet up with back in Europe too. So after running round town saying farewell to a few folks, I was really, really, leaving Bright, heading to Kieran’s parents’ place for tea and a night’s sleep. Originally, I was going to try to be in Sydney on Sunday but then opted for an overnight train, getting me there on Monday morning, giving us time to check out a flying site near Gundowring in the Kiewa Valley and Kieran’s local team playing in Albury.

The train to Sydney stopped a lot more often than I expected for an overnight service, but then it wasn’t a sleeper and only one of two trains through that day so I guess it had to. Anyway, 8 sleep-deprived hours later (partly my own fault for now having a laptop with wireless internet) I was back in Sydney, and being familiar with the trains and buses made getting to Bondi a breeze. A couple of days of doing basically nothing followed, and I was pretty much OK with that. With 3 months left in Australia, and 46 days work to knock off before being eligible I was starting to feel a bit more pressure to get a farm job so I idly checked out the government website, noticing a tractor driving job: just the kind of job I’d been wanting all year, seeing as I’m not just lazy but can actually drive a tractor.

Bright

Even though the job had only been posted that day, I didn’t fancy my chances as I called the recruitment agency, but they told me to send over a CV so I enthusiastically obliged. Next morning, having heard nothing (I had sent the CV not long before COB though) I called to check up on the job and was told to expect a call from the farmer: great. Daryl, the farmer, called back and checked what experience I had and, although I was lacking in the way of mechanical or welding experience, he seemed happy to take me on.

So here I am, finally blogging in the present, on a train to Moree, having, partly out of hunger, but mainly out of boredom, already eaten a steak pie and roast-pork dinner only 2 ½ hours into an 8 ½ hour journey watching my first taste of new Australian countryside rush past my window for the first time in 3 months. Really this title is a bit misdirecting: if this job works out I’ll have moved from one long-term location to another with only a few days in between where I’ve been ‘backpacking’.

6 May 2010

Checking out Gundowring

Gundowring – Ready to launch

May 2, 2010, with a free day before I headed to Sydney, Kieran Schultz and I headed to a flying site that William Oates had told Kieran about, knowing only that it was somewhere near Gundowring. A quick bit of google-ing while driving through the Kiewa Valley gave us a location, and some helpful directions, apparently written by the kind owner of the property where the site was located. A directory of flying sites hinted that the road was suitable for 2wd vehicles, but I wouldn’t take a car I cared about the condition of up the hill: rain has cut some deep channels into the steep and winding road, making it almost, but not quite beyond the reach of Kieran’s car.

At the top there is plenty space to park and some bits of astro-turf-style matting dotted around the west-facing slope. The launch is a small bowl-shape, seemingly making it suitable for launching into a range of NNW-SSW winds, although, without further exploration of the site, I’d say it’s better suited for the north-end of that spectrum of wind directions. For Kieran, on his restricted licence, and I, just on my intermediate rating, it was our first time at a site without any instructors, and our first time at a site that we’d received no briefing on, so it was quite cool to be there, assessing the conditions, hazards, landing options, and launch options ourselves. After a while of observing the wind, which was a fairly consistent 4 knots with steady but very light cycles coming through, I was happy to launch, but then I wasn’t the one launching, and didn’t have the adrenaline, invoked by the prospect of jumping off into the unknown, running through me.

Flying Gundowring

There are a couple of trees down the slope from launch that, if it were quite sinky, might need avoiding, and we mulled over the possibility of that happening for a while, deciding that the steady wind up the face should afford a fairly bouyant launch. A rough flight plan was discussed on your first launch without an instructor present I think being absolutely sure that you’ll launch ok and just have a good glide is way more important than getting big ideas of ridge-soaring down the valley or soaring in your head, so Kieran wasn’t too bothered about making plans other than to land in a flat paddock near the road where we’d entered the property.

Opting for a forward launch from just below the top lip of the bowl, Kieran was off, although he had to take a few extra light steps before the slope of the hill was enough to fall away from his feet. The glide out from launch was so buoyant the trees below launch paled into insignificance and I wondered if he’d find any lift before taking his car back down the hill. Not finding anything significant, Kieran glided down to one of the paddocks south of the road entering the property, making a last minute turn as a nice looking field suddenly sharpened up to reveal a carpet of thistles.

With some more wind there’s probably some ridge-soaring potential on the range that extends north of the launch. We noticed cumulus over the range across the valley to the west of us, but not a lot over the range we’d flown off.

3 May 2010

Tasmania Day 4: St Helens & Binalong Bay

Parked up in a campground, in a forest, miles from anywhere, the last thing we wanted to wake up to was a flat tyre and an empty radiator. It turned out to be more of a setback than a disaster though, as our spare tyre was good and Kevin had a tube of radiator putty and bottle of fluid. Soon we were heading for the east coast town of St Helens and Binalong Bay, in a perfect sunny day, giving way to rain and then, to our amazement, hail.

Through the curtain of falling ice, Binalong Bay looked like another one of Tassie’s typically beautiful beaches and, having not showered for a couple of days, I thought it would be an epic show of manly-ness to don the swimming shorts and do some body-boarding in it. I think it took 2 seconds – and that could be an exaggeration – for us to start shivering after stepping out of the car in shorts and flip-flops and embracing the arctic weather but, with either of us unwilling to back down from the challenge, we charged on towards the beach with our body-boards. To stack the odds further against us, there was a river of what looked like torquise liquid ice flowing between us and the beach-proper and that almost made me turn back. Compared to the sharp hail cutting our skin the, marginally less cool waters were bliss and subdued the shivering for a few minutes.

The cauldron that was the sea, bubbling from the impacts of millions of frozen bullets, was probably the coldest water I’ve ever been in: I never did get over the initial blast of cold when I jumped in and after about 10 minutes of catching waves I was shivering so much I couldn’t hold the camera still enough to take a video of Kevin riding the surf. If feeling like I was minutes away from full-blown hypothermia wasn’t enough to get us back to the car, the forks of lightning that started striking just behind the beach compelled us to beat a pretty quick retreat from a day of body-boarding I’ll never forget.

Starting our descent down the east coast, we made Lagoon’s Beach our target rest area for the night. The rain never did ease up though, and we really couldn’t be bothered trying to pitch a tent in the rain, so the night was spent trying to sleep in the driver’s seat of the car.

28 April 2010

Finding My Flying Feet and Learning to Soar

After what was nothing short of an amazing introduction to paragliding on Saturday, we quickly got into the routine of driving up hills and running off them. Sunday morning was spent at the Pines – a site near Myrtleford that was good when the wind turned southerly – and for the afternoon, and all of Monday, we had the legendary ‘Old’ Bill deliver the course theory to us. Bill – who is, in fact, old enough to justify his name – falls into the category of one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, sitting alongside legends such as Mr Anderson, my history teacher. With a history of captaining ships in the merchant navy to flying sail-planes, he backed up almost every piece of theory with a comical anecdote that made digesting the fairly dry aviation theory so much easier.

Tuesday saw us back at the Pines, where I was still having trouble running out my launches, converting the last metre of descent into forward motion to save my now quite sore feet, which was a worry. Also bad habits were creeping into my launch technique, resulting in me launching my wing into a tree, luckily with no harm to the wing or me. We made a return to Mystic on Wednesday – after the very short descent from the top of the hill at pines, the flagship launch site felt perilously high again – and on my third flight, I finally got up the courage to land myself.

Up until this point, as I came in on my final approach the instructor on the ground would tell me exactly when to flare – or pull my brakes as hard as could in other words – the glider, so it would pitch back and land as softly as possible, but it’s very hard, even as a skilled observer, to judge exactly when to call the flare over the radio, as not only do you not experience the landing air conditions first hand, but also have to judge how long the pupil will take to respond to your call, so my landings tended to be harder than they needed to be. All these hard landings and sore feet had me genuinely worried that I might be doing some damage and had me doubting whether I’d be able to keep up with the sport if I couldn’t land safely, but as soon as I started judging the flare myself, my landings turned into something of an art and I finally felt comfortable with the sport.

It’s quite scary to think that, up until this point, I was committed to an intensive and costly course based on having enjoyed flying a sail-plane a few times and admiring the photography of a para-motor pilot from Inverness, so it was more than a minor relief to finally, confidently say I was loving what I was doing.

At lunch that day, the other Bill (Bright has a serious problem with everyone having the same name) took me for a tandem flight which turned into my first ever thermalling experience, and took the course to a whole new level of amazement. Just a minute off the launch, Bill steered us into the first thermal that took us hundreds of metres above launch, just far enough for me to be thankful that he’d told me to wear a coat, and for the next forty minutes we cruised above Mystic, the Wandiligong Valley, and Reliance Ridge. It was also my first time taking a camera with me – I wasn’t quite bold enough to take my 50d this time, but still, my 350d doesn’t exactly fall into the dispensable category, especially with a 10-20mm lens bolted to the front of it – so most of the flight was spend glued to it, savouring my first experience of unrestricted aerial photography.

Thursday saw me really getting into the flying, emulating yesterday’s tandem flight with a 40 minute solo flight of my own: my first time above launch on my own. I’d spent most of the day before that, seething as I watched my unfortunate flight timing miss all the thermals that were then so clearly marked out by the other students circling and rocketing skywards in. Friday, although not as unstable as Thursday, saw me starting to feel the lift and maintain height in thermals on my own. Saturday was bitter-sweet: our last day of flying and I didn’t catch any good thermals, but I did get to see Al (short for Albania, as none of us could pronounce his real name), a rather big guy who seemed to sink out of the sky on every flight, finally catch a thermal and experience what we’d been raving about for days: the smile on his face was priceless.

Sunday was exam day: multiple choice can only be so hard, unless the questions are worded stupidly, so even though I got 98% I still contested the 2 frustratingly vague questions that cost me my geeky ace-crown. Then it was time to say goodbye to Kieran, Kieren, Brad and Al and say goodbye to paragliding for a while to deal with the pressures of the real world. But wait, I’m a backpacker with no job, nor schedule, so for me it was only the beginning of my flying career in Bright…

27 April 2010

Today, I Learn to Fly

Saturday, 13th February 2010

This was it: the day I was going to learn how to throw myself off a hill and soar into the clouds. Ted picked me up in time for the 8.30 start at the school and we met the other 4 guys who were also in for 9 days of awesomeness. Before we could get down to the serious business of matching the right size wings to the right pupils, there was the small issue of sorting out what we would each be called, seeing as 3 of the 5 of us were called Kieran. For once in my life I didn’t bother promoting my nickname, so I got to keep my real name, or to keep things clear(ish) when talking on the radios, I was ‘Kieran-that-is-Kieran’. After doing the usual signing our lives away to the school and the HGFA, we hit the road, heading to the Reeds training slope.

The training hill is sloped just enough to let us charge down it, as we are launching, but without dropping away from us so much that we end up suspended in the air high enough that we could do much harm if we pulled a control too hard. Bill, one of the instructors, showed us the forward launch technique then we got hooked into harnesses and tried it ourselves. Forward launching is the easiest way to launch: basically just run forward and the wing that’s attached behind you is thrust into the air and flies forward above your head, much like what a kite would do if you faced away from it and ran forward. The trick then is to balance running speed and brake pressure on the wing to keep it from overtaking you, or falling back down behind you. My first attempt looked good: wing up above me nicely, running down the hill, then for some reason I stopped running so fast and the wing mercilessly overtook me, leaving nothing for me to do but nose-dive into the ground with such determination that I became an instant contender for the bloopers video compilation.

After lunch it was time to fly, thankfully not solo just yet though. Up at Mystic launch, Adam – the instructor who was going to take me for my tandem flight – unpacked the wing we were about to fly the 400m down to the landing paddock, while I took measure of fairly sizeable drop in front of me and felt excitement give way to adrenaline and nerves. Even though my part in the launch was simple – when told to run, run, and don’t stop, not even when you think you’re in the air, until told to – I was still weighing up the chance of me not running right, tripping us both up and rolling down the rock-strewn hill-side. Now strapped into the harness which was in turn attached to the paraglider and my instructor’s harness, I was standing on launch, looking straight out over Bright below, eyes fixed on my target, waiting for the call…and go! Leaning forward into a run, I took one step, two steps, maybe a third, then I was just running in the air, and before I knew it Adam was telling me to get comfortable in the seat of the harness. It had taken 5 seconds to go from standing like a turkey on launch to floating through the air, wind blowing past my ears, totally at ease with the fact my instructor and I were suspended from a glorified piece of tent by a few dozen bits of string each about a millimetre thick.

The conditions were calm and stable, meaning we had roughly 5 minutes in the air as we glided along the ridge extending towards the landing area. Adam passed the controls over and let me steer the wing, bringing it over the paddock and flying a figure-of-eight formation to loose height over the downwind end of the field, before we came down, fairly gently, in the middle of the paddock. Before any of us had time to reflect on what we’d just done, Ted came over and coyly asked ‘now do you want to do that on your own?!’, and in a moment of blind courage we all said ‘hell yeah!’.

Back up at launch, the fact that I’d just successfully flown down from here did nothing to calm my nerves, as this time it was all on me: nobody to launch, and nobody to fall back if it went wrong. Glider unpacked, rolled out, lines untangled and checked, harness strapped in, checked and re-checked, harness attached to glider, brakes and risers in hand, and I was ready, watching the wind streamers down the slope, waiting for the wind to blow steadily up the face of the launch, and then Ted came across the radio Run! And I was off. Leaning forward I felt the wing rising up behind me, a little crooked but I could still hear Ted repeatedly saying run so I kept going, then run, run, release and I released the risers, but now the wing felt as though it was overtaking me – not a good scenario – Ted was now a little more insistent RUN!, but I could feel the wing struggling to stay aloft now that I’d let it get ahead of me, and I hesitated to run further down the slope, although I already felt that at this point I was in for a rough tumble down the hill if the wing didn’t fly. Ted, seeing that things were past the point of a safe first-take off came through the radio ok, ok, abort, pull down hard on both brakes, but I was now at the edge of the astro-turf launch and entering the steeper, rough part of the slope. Doing as I was told, I pulled the brakes down past my waist – theoretically stalling the glider so it would fall behind me – but instead of stopping, the glider filled with life, lifting me just off my feet so only my toes could vainly try to gain some purchase on the ground that was fast falling away from me. For a second, I looked at the ground, down the rough slope, over the hundreds of pine trees that I was heading for, dangling in suspense, not falling, but not quite flying, as I was still choking the wing’s desire to fly with the brakes. Ted called through brakes up, and then I was flying, not struggling down the hill with a half inflated balloon tied to my back, but actually flying.

It took a few seconds to digest what had just happened, as I dangled in the running position in my harness, watching the ground now steadily falling away from me and the air beginning to rush past my face. After that I was a robot, Ted may as well have been holding a radio-controlled joystick as I followed each of his commands – get comfortable in your harness, a little more brakes, turn right 40 degrees, keep that heading – but after a minute, I was flying out over the spur of Emily ridge, taking a few seconds to enjoy the view – Wandiligong valley to the right; Bright to the left – now being guided down by Adam in the landing paddock. The rest was fairly simple, although coming in to land, the nerves edged up a little, and I found myself not running out the landing and having quite sore feet because of it.

The timings of the troop-carrier’s runs up the hill meant that Kip and I got the chance of a second solo flight before the light faded, and thankfully that launch went a lot more smoothly than the first, although the landing was just as heavy as the first. The 3 Kierans all ended up staying at the hostel, and high from our day’s achievements, we headed to the Bright Brewery for a celebratory pint.