Volume 1, Number 1
10 AM, Sunday, December 30th, 2001
Deniliquin, NSW
"Gordo, I have a feeling we're not in Wylie anymore."

The adventure begins

Christmas day 2001 and I arrived at the airport and queued, as you do. Found Phil in line with the Longman Clan (They’re heading for NZ for a holiday). And Gordo found us in the departure area.

The plane trip was non-eventful. I nodded and was rewarded with a solid nap. Phil mostly pretended to sleep as he was sitting next to Gordon (I’m sure we’d all do the same.)

Arriving in Melbourne and my brother was there on time to pick us up at 0530, pretty impressive as he’s rarely out of bed before 1100. Looking good thus far when Gordo’s world descended and none of his luggage (including harness) turned up on the carousel. We got a free coffee and Tim-Tam while Gordo sorted it out. His suitcase turned up, (Apparently it had slid to the back of the plane on take-off) but they tracked his harness down in Canberra (Well they’ve all got white fuselages and red tails, you can understand the confusion.) "Never mind Mr. Marshall we’ll get it to you, wherever you are."

So off to the city we go to catch the bus. Here we met up with Miguel and were promptly on our way to Ballarat, via Geelong, having dutifully avoided some of the land’s harshest excess baggage charges. At Ballarat Rohan met us at the bus stop, with a car. And after a Macca’s feed we were on our way, again, in a Four Runner with a dodgy auto-choke. A few hours later we’re in Deniliquin, set-up camp in the pub and Gordo gets the final call telling him his harness has arrived at the caravan park. Pretty impressive effort from Qantus, especially considering the Telstra operator couldn’t find the caravan park’s phone number. Bomber and Spike finally arrived courtesy of great bloke Shannon, and they somehow convinced Gordo to head back to the pub, whilst Phil and I turned in.

And then some action

Our first practise day. After the post-transport glider check at the park our new best mate Shannon offered to tow us and we were off to the paddock. The tow paddock is quite good, looks to be 2-3 km’s in each direction with 3 strip directions (E-W, SE-NW and SW-NE) arranged in an equilateral triangle (So Phil noted). The paddock is 5km north of Conargo, which is 32km north of Deni. It’s quite a hike each way and unfortunate that the original paddock (next to Deni) isn’t available. C’est la Vie.

Deni is quite large (about 8000) while Conargo has about 15, including sheep. At this stage Bomber was showing normal form and hadn’t shut-up, Gordo appeared to be very relaxed and Phil and myself were just feeding of the constant stream of verbal driblage that goes on between them (OK I contributed). On arrival at the paddock we set an enthusiastic task of flying back to Deni, against a 15mph headwind. The sky looked good, cu’s had been popping since about 1000 and by 1400 were well set-in for the day.

Gordo, Phil, Bomber and myself all eventually got up, and Gordo landed back at launch while Phil, Bomber and I headed off on course. Clouds were working quite good, even though I couldn’t read them at all. It was a matter of flying to them and feeling for the cores - they were quite flat so it was hard to tell where the lift was pushing up.

We were getting pretty good 500-600fpm to base at about 6300. Though you usually had to hang on to 300-400fpm for a lot of the climb, especially below 4000. About 40 mins later I’d taken a pounding and was down to 2800. Meanwhile Phil and Bomber had lost nothing in the glide, sampled some 1100fpm and continued on, with a "See ya Daz" from Bomber. At this stage we were a whopping 7km upwind of launch, just past Conargo.

I eventually got up, having conceded a bit of ground and was pleasantly surprised to see a glider about 2km in front. This was Bomber. Phil had taken a different line and unfortunately he landed about 8km past Conargo. About half an hour later Bomber and I eventually flew past Phil. I was making a blistering 20mph over the ground when gliding, with absolutely no control at full VG.

It was a little lumpy at times and Bomber was also leaving a lot of the rope at home. After generally flying our own course, and sponging of each other at any opportunity we were over half way and actually looking good to make Deni. Bomber obviously had his contact lenses in as he was fairly quiet, only occasionally pipping in with "good one over here Daz". When he hasn’t got his eyes in he spends most of his time on the radio asking where you are.

Finally after about 2hrs 30 on course we landed. In the end about 5km short of Deni as the Paddocks looked small, and the trees are ‘ken huge. Deni is on the Edward river and as such is full of trees. Total flight length about 30 km into a 10-15mph breeze. Pretty happy with that.

Apres flying

That night we headed down to registration and re-met heaps of people from last year. The atmosphere was quite electric (though a bit overwhelming for we plebs) with lots of hellos echoing around in various accented voices.

Gordo is still trying to break into the release market with the link knife, with no luck to date. While Bomber has jumped on a good bandwagon with the Blue Eye glasses, and it appears to be the eyewear of choice this season. Good to see the wider brimmed soft hat has made a comeback.

Bad luck, you’re stuck with it.