Turning 90 degrees right towards the town, I noted my new heading and distance, calculated my arrival time and wrote down the airport’s radio frequency and runway headings. I then shut down every electronic device except the radio – including the GPS, which I had now been using to navigate for over 55,000 kilometres. I began steering by compass and timing the flight by my watch, just like I’d done during my first cross-country training flight a decade or so before.
The red sand and scrub landscape was flat and featureless. I was incredibly relieved when Weipa airport came into sight and I could make my inbound radio call. After landing, I quickly parked and began searching for the fault. I couldn’t see anything loose, so I called an expert: Wal from Bert Flood Imports, the Rotax engine distributor, was a guru for these engines. He had never heard of a generator failing. There are sometimes problems with the rectifiers, an electronic box between the engine and the battery, he told me.
Oh, are there? I thought. I wish I’d known that eight months ago.
After a couple of hours of plugging and unplugging, and studying wiring diagrams emailed by fellow Searey pilots David and Doug on the ground in Longreach, it became clear that the rectifier was the most likely culprit. The plug connection had blackened lugs, suggesting it had overheated. There was only one thing to do: get another one ASAP, most likely from Melbourne.
Rob Loneragan, who had also helped work out the fault, arranged for a rectifier to be flown from Melbourne overnight. I spoke to the freight agents at Weipa airport to advise there was a package coming, and asked what time I should collect it.
‘Oh, overnight really means two days out here,’ they said. ‘If you’re lucky it might be here by 3 p.m., but more likely the following day.’
My heart sank. That would force my greeting parties in Longreach and Rylstone to wait a couple of days. Worse still, Anne had put a lot of work into planning my homecoming, and rescheduling that would mean a lot of mucking around. But I couldn’t see what else to do. I rang Rob again and apologised that it looked like I’d be at least a day late.
‘Stand by,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another idea.’
Rob tracked down Paul Hewitt, who owned a Searey in Innisfail, an hour south of Cairns, which was about 700 kilometres from Weipa. Despite having never met me, he left work immediately and removed the rectifier from his own plane. I rang Rebecca at Skytrans, the airline with the first flight the next morning from Cairns to Weipa, to book in the package. Pretty soon she called back and advised that, rather that send the part as freight in the hold with the baggage, one of the airline’s staff, Christopher Palmer, would carry it to Weipa and hand it to me in person.
Paul dropped the package off at 5.30 a.m. at Cairns airport, which was an hour’s drive from his home. Christopher handed me the part at 8 a.m. I simply plugged it in, and by 8.45 a.m. the Sun was back together and the engine started at first try. The red warning light was off. Skytrans refused to accept any payment. Paul wouldn’t be able to fly his plane until I replaced the part. Such generosity was incredible. By 10 a.m. the Southern Sun was heading towards Longreach over a dust-red desert.
Headwinds made it a seven-hour flight. I was due to give a talk that night in Longreach, at the theatre of the Qantas Founders Museum. Rather than the day off I was looking forward to, I would now be arriving an hour before I was due to speak. At least I would make it, though, and not disappoint anyone.
In the distance I could see dark clouds, thunderstorms and flashes of lightning. It was an ominous outlook. Flirting with one of the greatest killers in small plane aviation, ‘get-there-itis’, I threaded my way through gaps in the clouds a couple of miles from the lightning. While my flying remained technically under visual flight rules, I was pushing to land at Longreach because I didn’t want to let down the people waiting. This was why, for the whole trip up to that point, I had not made my plans public: I was worried that one of the side-effects would be flying through bad weather to meet a waiting audience.
And so a small, rather old-fashioned, silver flying boat, the Southern Sun, landed at dusk on 12 November 2015, becoming the first solo round-the-world amphibious aircraft, and I the first solo circumnaviator. We were directed by fellow Searey pilot David Geers to park in front of the historic Qantas hangar at the museum. A few dozen people were there, including Nicole Kuttner from the museum, who had promoted my arrival on the local radio station. I shut the Sun down, climbed out and was handed a bottle of champagne, which was the perfect greeting. As we drank and chatted, I was presented with the inaugural Ross Vining Exceptional Achievement Trophy, which had been ‘virtually’ awarded by video when I was holed up on Adak.
Inside the museum, I hooked up my iPad to a projector. I should have been exhausted but was on such a high that I spoke for ninety minutes without pause. I loved every minute of it. Telling the tale was like living the journey over again.
There were lots of good questions, the most common being: ‘What’s next?’
‘I need to get home first,’ I said.
The next morning there was a 10-knot tailwind and not a cloud in the sky. Soon after the Sun took off, my phone rang. It was Jon Faine, an ABC Melbourne radio host who had heard about the trip. Near the end of our live-to-air interview, he asked, ‘So where are you now?’
‘Four and a half thousand feet, 20 miles south of Longreach,’ I replied.
It was only then that he realised I was flying.
After seven hours of flying over increasingly high cloud, I made an inbound radio call from 13,500 feet and the Sun descended over the farmland surrounding Rylstone, where Rob had redeveloped a private grass airfield, Rylstone Aerodrome; pilots can buy a block of land there and build themselves a hangar and a home. I circled over the field, landed and taxied across to the original clubhouse and tower, which had been restored by Rob. I was surprised at the size of the welcoming crowd, which was about fifty people, including my friend Ian Westlake, who had watched me depart from Sydney in April.
The local State Emergency Service staged a sausage sizzle. The steak sandwich they made me really hit the spot. Now I felt I was all but home. I spent the afternoon explaining the Sun’s systems and regaling people with tales from the trip. In the evening we went into town, where Rob had booked several tables at the local pub, and enjoyed a very social dinner. Just three nights earlier, I couldn’t help remembering, I’d eaten alone on the beach in Ambon.
I slept at the airfield in the old control tower, which had been turned into a bedroom. When I woke the next morning, I had a stunning 360-degree view of the field from the bed, which occupied most of the room. It was a glorious way to begin the day of the last flight of my journey in the Southern Sun.
37.
The Wizard of Oz
‘There’s no place like home.’
DOROTHY, THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
The final sunrise. Saturday, 14 November 2015. Day 213.
As I looked out at the Rylstone airfield, the first signs were good: some cloud, some sun and blue sky. Everything looked right for the last flight of this journey. After a quiet breakfast with Rob, and a slow, trepidatious pre-flight, it was time for the Southern Sun and me to make our way south.
An hour south of Rylstone we were flying in almost clear blue skies, with just a few puffy pillows of clouds for company. With a stronger tailwind than expected, the planned six-hour flight looked like it would only take five hours. Anne would be at Williamstown with family and friends at 3 p.m., so the Southern Sun had to slow down or else they’d miss us landing and me alighting. I pulled back the throttle and took my time.
I felt a strange mix of pride and nervousness at being so close to finishing this incredible journey. The weather looked fine and everything was running okay, but only forty-eight hours earlier we’d been grounded in Weipa, so I couldn’t help thinking again that this was all too good to be true. I fervently hoped no last-minute gremlins were lying in wait. I thought back on the seven months – so many different peoples, places, cu
ltures. As I write this now, a year later, the scale of the trip has certainly sunk in, but on that final leg the cockpit was filled with a mixture of elation and bewilderment.
I thought of the people I’d met around the world. So many had helped out with acts of kindness – my travel would have been so much harder, and much less fulfilling, without their generosity. I was conscious that it is so easy to feel this way but never connect again with such folks, so I had kept a list and would at least send them all a ‘season’s greetings’ card that year.
Kilmore and the mountain range marking the northern boundary of Melbourne appeared on the horizon, as the tailwind turned to a headwind, and the GPS calculated our ETA was now exactly 3 p.m. Only half an hour to go. As we passed over the eastern suburbs, I was so excited to see Melbourne’s skyline that I decided to fly along the Yarra River, and over the Bolte and Westgate bridges.
As we passed the Newport power station and approached Williamstown, it was only 2.47 p.m. The Sun flew an orbit over the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, and I saw Terry O’Hare’s huge Australian flag flying proudly from the mast of the Kookaburra to welcome the Southern Sun home.
To kill some more time I flew south, over the bay, where I could see a fleet of yachts racing in our club’s two-day Lipton Trophy Regatta. Was this to be my Bernard Moitessier moment, having completed a circumnavigation, continuing on to avoid the crowds? Not quite. Passing over the yachts and circling once, the Sun wagged her wings on the way back, as the clock crept towards 3 p.m. It was time to land on the waters of Hobsons Bay.
It was rather windy, but luckily it was coming from the south, so the water was reasonably protected. Being a Saturday, there were a lot of boats around, which was causing a general sloppiness in the waves that I would have preferred to avoid. Flying back over the club and the landing area, I could see a long line of yachts sailing towards the finish line, at the end of the club marina. It was such a solid line of boats that there wasn’t a gap between them to land!
I circled Hobsons Bay several times, waiting for a suitable stretch of water. The view from 1000 feet made it quite easy to judge a good landing area. Finally, as we turned left over Webb Dock, a path became clear. I performed my pre-landing checks – three times over, in fact, to ensure no last-minute mistake led to embarrassment. Here we go.
As I felt the hull skim the water, I pulled the power and in a matter of seconds was landed. I slowly taxied towards the boat ramp, and could see a couple of dozen family and friends lining the jetty. I opened the window and waved, and was delighted to hear cheers and clapping from the small gathering, even with my headset on and the sound of the engine.
Now there was just one last hurdle. The boat ramp concrete drops away just below the waterline; I had become stuck here previously, and my greatest paranoia was that I’d come to grief again today, as I left the water. We had timed my arrival to be at high tide, so as to minimise the chances, but it was still the biggest concern I had about the whole day. I had learned to approach the ramp slowly, and then with 10 metres to go to apply the power so I’d almost jump over the end of the ramp.
I overcompensated a tad, and the tail of the Sun lifted up as she leapt onto the ramp. But everything was okay, and I continued up the ramp to level ground. Even before I’d shut down the engine, Tim leaned in to hug me. That sense of being so missed by your son is one of life’s greatest joys.
I shut down the plane, and found I didn’t feel ready to jump out just yet. When I did, the journey would truly be over. As I sat there, Anne and Tim handed me a magnum of champagne, which I jubilantly popped. As I went to take a triumphant swig, I bumped the bottle into my microphone – oops, my headset was still on! I quickly moved it, took a sip, handed the bottle back and climbed out so I could hug Anne, Jack and Tim, be welcomed by my family and friends, and shake many hands.
I was so happy to see everyone – special people from my life, spanning decades. Even my grandmother was there, beaming but also shaking her head in disbelief. I showed people the plane, and there were plenty of questions about food, water and so on. Was that small backpack really all I’d taken? Most hadn’t seen the Southern Sun before and were horrified at how small she was. ‘Really? In that?’
I didn’t have the words to describe succinctly what I had just been through. I knew it had been enormous, and I suspected life-changing, but how do you respond to a question like, ‘So, how was it?’ Just saying, ‘Yeah, great,’ doesn’t cut it. I suspected it was going to take some time for me to make sense of this profound personal experience.
While standing on the lawn at the yacht club, one of my Kookaburra crew members asked, in front of Anne, ‘Any chance you can sail tomorrow? We need a skipper for the regatta.’
I looked at Anne, thinking, No, I need a day home with my family, but before I could even open my mouth she said, ‘Oh, go on, the fresh air will do you good.’
She was right: the persistent smell of petrol and avgas had dulled my senses somewhat, and there is nothing quite as relaxing and yet focused at the same time as steering a classic yacht with twelve crew around a racecourse. It proved to be just the day I needed to unwind, and clear my lungs and my head. But there was something I needed to tell my family.
The next day was Monday, and I went back to work. I had many calls and notes of congratulations, but I also continued answering work emails with the multitude of people still unaware I’d been away. Business as usual.
That night, over an emotional dinner with Anne, Jack and Tim, for the first time I shared what had happened at the end of the Atlantic crossing over the Canadian coast. How close I had been to not coming home.
38.
The Way
‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’
FERRIS, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986)
Given half a chance, life can certainly be interesting.
The three most common questions I’ve been asked since returning home are:
What was the most amazing place?
What did you learn?
What’s the next adventure?
I have spent a lot of time thinking about each of these questions – especially the second.
Although I love quoting lines from movies to make a point, I don’t think ‘life is like a box of chocolates’; for me, it’s a journey. We embark on a voyage and hope to fill our lives with adventures of all sizes along the way.
In my journey so far there have been many wonderful adventures: raising a family with Anne, travelling with them to faraway places such as Egypt, Antarctica and Bonnie Doon, helping set up thousands of cinemas across thirty countries, sailing on the historic Kookaburra for twenty years, being Commodore of a yacht club. Competing in the America’s Cup Jubilee and the Tour de France à la Voile also come to mind.
My bankruptcy meant 2004 was a really bad year for me, my worst yet, while the court case saw me off my game and depressed for three years. I found the courage to fight back, and came out on top emotionally and personally. The flight around the world in the Southern Sun was one extraordinary voyage – so grand that I wrote this book and made a documentary to help me make sense of it all. However, I suspect none of it would have happened if not for the hardships in those years before.
But the greatest journey yet – by far – has been saving the Sun Theatre, restoring and reimagining it for the modern era. Although we struggled financially for the first few years, I think it’s fair to say it’s now a beloved focal point of the village. The voyage of the Sun in Yarraville continues, as she goes from strength to strength. We keep improving the Sun Cinema in Bairnsdale, and we have some other cinemas planned as well: it’s at the core of who I am, and we’ll keep working to make them even better.
Cinema Loro sa’e, our free outdoor cinema in East Timor, is now in its seventh year; it too has been a heart-warming success, having travelled to hundreds of villages and screened films for tens of thousands of people. In April 2017 we f
ounded Screens Without Borders, our new social enterprise, to expand our Timor model, initially into the Northern Territory and Papua New Guinea, and further afield in the longer term.
One of the great lessons of sailing is that, sometimes, to get where you want to be you may need to go back and forth a little; if the conditions change, you tack. It can be easy to stick rigidly to the path you’re on because you don’t want to change your mind, but looking to the horizon can sometimes reveal an alternate path – so take it.
We must not forget the lessons of the past: they are our greatest trials. Equally, though, I now realise we mustn’t be pulled under by them either. The hours I have spent awake in the pre-dawn, fretting how I could have done certain things differently, were wasted time and mental energy. The future is the only thing I can change, so with strength of mind and lessons learned I will move forward confidently, knowing that when I apply myself I can achieve great things.
Yet I’m just forty-eight, with at least twenty years of work left in me, and hopefully many more years of fun beyond that. I know I’m very lucky to be alive – the irony of saving the Sun and then being saved by the sun is not lost on me – but I am determined to make the most of the second chance I have been granted and ensure that on the continuing voyage of my life I give to those around me. I certainly have ideas for other adventures, but, like the voyage of the Southern Sun, an idea without a plan remains a dream; I’ll work away at them and keep them to myself till their time comes. One day, when my working years are over, I might even realise my first big dream: to sail around the world. But for now my attentions are elsewhere.
The Southern Sun, my silver friend, did so well to take me safely around the world but I feel the time will soon come for her to have a rest. My next long flights and adventures will be for Screens Without Borders, so a larger bird is in order – one with more seats, so that Anne, the boys, friends or colleagues can join me. We’ll need room for portable cinema equipment, and definitely two engines for safety. That’s a whole new journey I can’t wait to start working on.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 27
