Even though the mechanics of piloting the plane would be just like those of the early days of aviation, I would have one big advantage over the pioneers of flight: the GPS information with digital maps would appear on a large electronic screen known as an EFIS. It also showed maps, speed, altitude and an ‘artificial horizon’ – life-saving information at night or when you’re in cloud.
A few back-up instruments would exist in analogue. A little red light would illuminate if the battery stopped charging, which was high on the list of please-god-do-not-happen faults. There would be a built-in radio, of course, and a transponder, which was a legal requirement and would transmit my position to airports and air-traffic controllers. I would keep a spare handheld radio that could be mounted on the dashboard and which I could easily grab if I had to ditch at sea. A satellite tracking device would record my position every fifteen minutes and post it to a website (a device that would have saved much heartache if one had been carried on Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which vanished on 8 March 2014). Like most light aircraft these days, the Searey also had a dash-mounted iPad holder. These tablets are popular with amateur pilots because they are such an efficient way to access information, including maps, flight procedures and airport details.
The Southern Sun would be unique in her personalisation. All of Progressive Aerodyne’s factory aeroplanes were painted white and dressed up with flashy colour decals. Much to the factory’s surprise, I asked for no decals – and the plane was to be painted silver. I wanted her to look like the 1930s Qantas, Imperial and Pan Am planes that inspired the trip. Also, I sourced car-seat leather in Australia and sent it to the factory in Florida, so I would be sitting on not just comfortable but also breathable seats, rather than the vinyl Seareys usually had.
I included one tiny but important piece of equipment that was at the core of my day-to-day living: a universal master key. Progressive Aerodyne normally installed standard aircraft key switches in their planes, but I had another idea.
Years earlier I had started down a path that an observer might say was bordering on obsession of finding ‘One Key to Rule Them All’. While restoring the Sun Theatre, it bugged me that so many doors throughout the sprawling building required dozens of keys. At our yacht club, where I was on the committee and Rear Commodore, I had been given a master key, which could open any door or lock. It was magnificent. So I asked the club’s security company to visit the Sun Theatre.
We designed a three-level key system, which created different levels of access for me and a few others, depending upon need. There were different keys for different doors, but the master key opened every lock. I loved it so much that a few months later I asked the company to rekey our house too, establishing another chain of keys, but using the same master key as for the Sun. The number of keys I needed was reducing – why stop there? Over the next few years I had our rental properties, our factory and even my mother’s house put on the single-key system. Once I had the lock on my bicycle converted, and then finally my car’s ignition lock, it was complete. I needed only one key to open or start everything. It was liberating. And so the Southern Sun was added to the one-key system too.
I was doing a lot of work in the United States at the time, both in the cinema business and developing solar farms. After a week in Los Angeles, Boston or Knoxville, I would catch a commercial flight to Orlando, drive north to Tavares, and spend the weekend test-flying the Searey. I flew for longer and longer periods, until one day I flew along the coast from Tavares all the way to Key West, at the very southern tip of the state. I circled a few islands and flew back to the airfield, although I didn’t land. I still had a few hours’ worth of fuel left, and decided to fly an hour north along the beach.
After ten hours of flying, I still had two hours’ worth of fuel left. The plane had performed well. When eventually I landed I was physically okay and mentally comfortable. The hours in the seat had not been particularly tiring, and my back was fine. I had emptied my bladder several times into a red bottle with a screw-top lid. (Red as in ‘STOP!’ – never drink from the red bottle!) By the end of 2014 I had a plan, an aircraft and 450 hours’ flying experience, which made me an advanced beginner or a fool with a pilot’s licence. Experienced commercial pilots have over 10,000 hours.
The factory removed the plane’s wings and packed it into a shipping container bound for Australia, where I further tested myself and the aircraft in preparation for departure. From Christmas 2014 through to April 2015, I made small tweaks to the equipment. If I was going to spend hundreds of hours airborne, it was vital that the cockpit was as comfortable and organised as possible.
Some requirements were simple. I had to store three litres of daily drinking water, along with an emergency water supply. A life raft and survival equipment needed to be at hand, but not in the way. I was taking oil, filters, nuts, bolts and other spare parts. In normal operations when flying solo in a Searey (and a number of small aircraft), a small ballast bag of lead shot is placed in the bow to balance the aircraft. This I replaced with bottles of oil and spares. As insurance against headwinds, or in case I had to switch to a longer route on the journey, I designed an extra fuel bladder for the passenger seat’s footwell, which kept it well secured and out of the way. That was another sixty litres of fuel, giving me three more hours of range.
One of the great features of the Searey’s Rotax engine is that it can use either aviation gasoline (known as avgas) or the same unleaded petrol that is used in cars. I knew the trip might not be feasible without this versatility. Often avgas wasn’t available at airports, or was outrageously expensive. Sometimes the quoted price would be over $4 a litre, occasionally even as high as $8, but car fuel was generally less than $1 a litre. I had to buy 180 litres of fuel most days, so the difference for a day’s flying could be worth more than $1000. I bought eight twenty-litre fabric collapsible fuel containers, which I could use to pick up fuel from petrol stations. These could be folded up and stored empty on a shelf behind the seat.
There wasn’t much room left in the plane, or weight capacity, so I had to scrimp on my personal belongings. I intended to wear flying overalls every day, as I’d been advised you had to wear a uniform to be taken seriously as a pilot at airports through Asia and the Middle East. For streetwear I had a pair of pants with zip-off legs. Every other clothing item was 100 per cent merino wool: five pairs of boxer underwear, two T-shirts, two long-sleeve tops, three pairs of socks and a zip-neck polo jumper. The amazing quality of the merino garments meant they could be worn for a few days before they needed washing, and would provide either coolness in the heat or warmth in the cold. (I’ll never understand why we all seemed to spend the last twenty years wearing plastic polar fleeces . . .)
A few personal items filled out my small backpack: an iPhone, two iPads and a charger. It was very tough to leave my beloved Leica camera at home. But the latest iPhone had an adequate camera, and I also mounted a Garmin VIRB and a GoPro on the plane to take video. This was to be a personal adventure, not a film shoot, and I knew that if I took too much equipment it would affect how I conducted myself. I wanted the journey to be simple, honest and focused.
One piece of personal equipment was more important than any other: a portable espresso machine. A coffee and a muesli bar early in the morning became an essential part of my daily routine. My days would often start before hotel breakfasts were served, so I travelled with dozens of muesli bars and sixty coffee pods. Why was my morning coffee so important? Well, coffee triggered a morning toilet visit, which meant that when I was flying that day, I only needed a bottle, rather than paper. When you go solo, toilet breaks have to be disciplined.
I’d also been working nonstop on my route, the permissions I needed to enter and land in each country, and where to stay, based on historical records and modern requirements. A lot of the logistical arrangements for the Sun’s voyage were carried out by an agent based in York, Mike Gray, of White Rose Aviation. For twenty-five years Mike has been securing
flight permits and clearances for private aircraft flying across international borders. Most of this work is for ferry flights – usually for when a plane is bought in one country and needs to be flown to a new owner in another country. Over the years, he has become known as the go-to guy for adventure flights as well. He is very patient and knows whom to contact in governments around the world, and he has a network of ground handlers in each country on call. He was invaluable in the last year of planning, especially for someone who dislikes paperwork as much as I do.
The logistical challenges were daunting. No one had flown a Searey or anything similar from Melbourne to London. I chose not to focus on the difficulties, or even the overall picture. I broke up the task into manageable objectives. I told myself each flight was just another day. That helped me progress, and stopped me focusing on the probability of failing, which was high. The Southern Sun and I were ready.
Act i
‘The question isn’t “What are we going to do?” The question is “What aren’t we going to do?” ’
FERRIS, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986)
5.
Thunderbirds Are Go
‘Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.’
EMMETT ‘DOC’ BROWN, BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)
The Smith family had a meal together on the morning the Southern Sun left for London. After a restless sleep, Anne, Jack, Tim and I sat alone on the deck at the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, where the Sun was waiting inside her yard, fully fuelled and provisioned.
The breakfast was quietly emotional and meant the world to me. It was a Sunday in the middle of autumn. Melbourne was starting to turn cold, although rays of morning light reflected off the clear waters of Hobsons Bay. Boats bobbed back and forth in the foreground, and office towers glinted in the distance. I was leaving a peaceful, familiar world.
Tim, who had just turned eighteen, exuded an understated emotion I had rarely seen in him before. He kept reaching out to touch me across the table. Anne, who had always supported my dreams, no matter how self-focused they were, was affectionate too. She was going to miss me, but wasn’t worried for my safety. She didn’t even think it was an unusual thing to do; perhaps I hadn’t mentioned that no one had done it before. But I was very apprehensive, which I think Tim sensed. Poor Jack had a cold, so his presence meant even more to me. We said goodbye on the boat ramp.
‘Have fun, and be safe,’ Anne said.
‘Please be careful, Dad,’ Tim said in his soft voice.
I quietly promised them that I would, hoping it was true. The knot in my stomach told me I was nervous. I felt an overwhelming responsibility to them to return.
They stood back. I climbed into the Sun and started the engine, drove down the ramp into the bay and slowly taxied to the end of the marina, all the time worrying over whether I had remembered everything. The manual said the Sun had enough power to lift off from the water, even though the plane was carrying more weight than she ever had before. I wasn’t certain she would get into the air.
As the last gauge turned green, I looked over to see Anne, Tim and Jack at the end of the marina, waving goodbye. I lined up into the wind and pushed the throttle all the way forward. The Sun accelerated smoothly through the water. As she picked up speed, I gently pulled on the stick and she rose into the sky. I circled over my family as I climbed, rocked my wings to bid them farewell, and continued into the sky.
It was the start of a quest ten years in the making, but one that even my closest friends didn’t know about. Or my mother. It was time to fess up.
I turned to the east. My first stop was to be Raymond Island, ninety minutes away, in the Gippsland Lakes region of eastern Victoria. My mother had holidayed there as a child, a tradition she passed on to her family. As kids, my brothers and I would get up early on Sunday mornings to watch Thunderbirds in bed with our father. Dad passed away much too young many years ago, and Mum retired to Raymond Island with her new partner, Alex. They have six waterfront acres, which they share with kangaroos and koalas. There is no bridge to the mainland. Access is by ferry, boat or – in today’s case – aircraft.
I had let Mum know the day before that I might be dropping in. A few minutes into the flight, as I levelled off at 1500 feet, just above the height of the city buildings a few kilometres off to my left, I texted her to say I would be there soon for coffee. I scanned the horizon through the busy airspace over the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Moorabbin airport was to my south, Essendon airport to my north and Lilydale airport out to the east. But mostly I was still thinking about my family. It occurred to me we hadn’t thought to take a family photo with the Sun before I left.
After half an hour, the Sun settled in at 3500 feet. There was some military airspace near Mum’s island, but it wasn’t operational on Sundays, which meant I could fly straight to her place. I sent her another message, this time from my iPad. It was a link to the online journal I had set up, which had an entry explaining my plan to fly to London. I suggested she might like to read it before I arrived. I flew over our Sun Cinema in Bairnsdale, and descended towards Raymond Island, following the Mitchell River downstream.
I landed on the waters of Lake Victoria, right in front of Mum’s house, lowered the wheels and drove up onto the sandy beach. She was standing on the foreshore, and I saw Alex making his way through the tea-trees. I shut the Sun down, climbed out and walked over to Mum. We said hello and I gave her a hug.
‘Michael, what are you up to now?’ she asked with a worried smile.
Several large kangaroos lay in the sun while we drank coffee on her deck. I explained the dream I’d had for ten years, the planning that had gone into it, and what I was going to do. I expected more questions, but she was subdued. Perhaps it was all a bit overwhelming. As midday approached I needed to keep going, and Mum’s farewell was similar to Anne’s: ‘Have a great trip, but please be careful.’
I later learned that, as I took off from the water, Mum had said to Alex, with a tear in her eye, ‘That might be the last time I’ll see him.’
The Southern Sun followed the stunning yet sparsely populated coast around the south-east corner of mainland Australia at 1500 feet. We passed Gabo Island and some of Victoria’s remotest seaside villages.
Whether you’re sailing or flying, following the beach from Melbourne to Sydney is not only beautiful, but easy navigation – just keep Australia to your left.
My first night was spent in Wollongong, a small city half an hour’s flight from Rose Bay in Sydney Harbour, where the original Qantas flights began. I walked to a local hotel and had a simple and comforting dinner with two Sydney friends, Ian and his partner, Sophie, who’d driven down to meet me. I felt a great relief at finally being on my way. Nonetheless, I was nervous about the landing on Sydney Harbour the following day.
On such a large body of water, strong winds and waves can make landing difficult. To minimise the risk – the winds are usually calmer in the morning – I took off at sunrise, when the air was crisp and a golden light bathed the Sun. I followed the coast north, all the way to the harbour. Because of the nearby Sydney airport – named after the first pilot to fly between the United States and Australia, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith – all light aircraft on the coastal route are required to fly along the beaches, at or below 500 feet. The morning was a gorgeous one, so it was like being told to stay up late, watch movies and eat ice cream. If you insist!
The good weather didn’t hold, though, and when I was over Port Jackson, the original and little-used name for the water lapping on central Sydney, I saw that the city was enveloped by rain. I flew between the Heads, at the opening to the harbour, and in a gentle arc I passed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House on my way back to historic Rose Bay.
The water was choppy but the landing unexceptional. I drove up onto the hard-packed sandy beach. Towering above me were six-storey apartment blocks, populated by people in various states of undress. Some waved. (For the record, the wrong people h
ad little or no clothes on.)
Rose Bay became Sydney’s first international airport in the late 1930s. Qantas built a passenger terminal for the London flights, which were undertaken in British-built Short C-class flying boats, better known as Empire Flying Boats. One of Sydney’s finer restaurants, Catalina – the name of another famous flying boat – is located right there, over the water. A modern air terminal caters to seaplanes that fly up and down the coast, mostly for tourist sightseers or wealthy Sydneysiders avoiding the beach traffic.
My friend Ian Westlake met me on the beach and gave me a letter to deliver. It was a handmade airmail envelope from his partner, Sophie, addressed to her grandmother in England. Airmail by flying boat had returned. I suddenly wished I’d thought to collect a few more letters to hand-deliver to Old England, in homage to my predecessors.
After a few minutes on land I was back in the Southern Sun, taxiing into the water. Apart from several oblivious locals, Ian was the only observer of the official beginning of my attempt to retrace the 1938 Qantas route. He also witnessed my first stupid mistake.
The water was rougher than I had hoped, but not so much that it was dangerous. The Sun is designed to lift off at 45 knots; in rough sea, it takes longer to reach that speed because the waves hit the hull and slow her down. If the waves are too big, it can even be impossible to take off, and the aircraft can be swamped.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 4
