Australia

I just read a post by Stealth Pilot and wondered where he is. I tried
to post it but it bounced. Here's another try before I give up.



Hey Stealth:

Aren't you talking more about the Lancair IV-P ? I know one went in
from a spin this summer down under. BTW, where in Aus are you? I
just flew around 1/2 the entire country in an RV-6 during the month of
September. We flew from melbourne to Bendigo, Mildura, Arkaroola,
Leigh Creek, Coober Pedy, Ayres Rock, Alice Springs, Cloncurry, on to
Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, then down the East Coast to MacKay,
Maroochydore, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, cut into Casino over to
Armidale, Temora, then back to Bendigo and Melbourne.

Took a month and about 30 hours of flying in the RV-6. Then we flew
to Hobart in Tassie. Toured all of Tasmania and left on the smoker at
Launceston back to Melborune, over to Auckland then back to L.A.

Australia was one of the most undeveloped and wealthy lands I've ever
seen. It's a treasure trove of minerals, from Uranium (the Beverly
Mine at Arkaroola), to Silver, Gold and Opals at Coober Pedy. Your
government is half way between a democracy and a dictatorship however.
I found that the British left quite a bit of pomp in the government
officials I dealt with to get an Australian pilot's license. It was
suppose to be a rubber stamp, but it wasn't. They wanted me to walk
through their maze, which I had to do. I guess I'd call the
government a socialistic government with a strong "Green" movement
that stops all mining exploration or any exploitation of the vast
minerals and other forms of wealth there.

One thing I really noticed is that nobody complained about the high
taxes. All the civilians I met sort of didn't care that they were
paying about 40% in income tax and another 10% imbedded in everything
they bought as a federal sales tax. That tax too is sort of incidious
because it's imbedded in the price of the item you buy. It's not
added on so you see it as an additional charge to something you
purchase.

With the fuel costs, and general items one needs to live, I sort of
figured your taxes are about 60% total of what you earn. I was
complaining about CASA when I got back here to my buddies at the FAA
and they said that at one time there were 1400 CASA employees and only
700 airplanes in all of Australia. Interesting.

Oh, CASA is their equivalent of our FAA, the Civil Aeronautics Safety
Administration or something almost like that. They demanded that I do
absolutely everything with perfection and told me they'd have my
permanent license to me in 6 weeks. Well, it's been since the first
of Sept. and I haven't seen it in the mail yet. I'm not holding my
breath.

Australia was a magnificent sight to see in the springtime (Sept).
But when we landed anywhere in the interior the flies were everywhere.
They crawled up my nose, in my eyes, ears, everywhere. I had a hard
time fueling the airplane without stopping. When we'd fly into an
airport, we'd break a branch off a tree as a swishing stick to keep
the flies at bay. In Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the planet, I
asked the hotel owner who picked us up from the airport if the flies
were always like this and his response was , "No...they haven't
started yet since it's early spring."

We bought nets to wear over our heads at Ayres Rock. Alice Springs
was worse. The nets were manditory.

Funny how many flies there were on the interior and there were none in
the rain forests of the East Coast.

Flying from the East coast at Brisbane back to Bendigo then to
Melbourne we saw the most beautiful and largest agricultural region on
the planet. Talk about wealth. There were $trillions in production.
The agricultural region just kept going for 1000 miles. It was
overwhelming to see the vast riches of that region. It actually look
a lot like the entire area from Vienna, Austria to Budapest, Hungary
which was the riches region I'd ever seen until I saw that one in
Australia.

There are many things that have a profound place in my memory of this
trip, from the great wealth of that nation to the kindness of the
people. One of the biggest memories too is that there is absolutely
nothing in the interior of Australia, no rivers, no agriculture, no
roads, no people. There are only a few aboriginal people near the
four of five towns that exist in the interior. There are litterally
millions of square miles of desert. But the desert is pretty. It's
all got plant life on it. It's no sand dunes. The plants are all
different than the ones we have here too. Although hard to see from
the air, we spent a lot of time at each place, just browsing around
and walking in the desert, enjoying the strange and unusual plants.

That's about it. Time to somewhere else now.

BWB