North Stradbroke Island (or “Straddie” to the locals) is located off the coast from Brisbane and is a bit of a local secret as a place to escape to for old style beach holidays. The largest town, Dunwich, has a small aerodrome with a grass and gravel strip. The local aeroclub likes to attract air tourists with a breakfast “fly in” held on the third Saturday morning of each month. The Redcliffe Aeroclub encourages members to take part in these breakfasts, especially newbies like I was in October 2015, to experience the flight over Moreton Bay and the exercise of landing and taking off from an unsealed strip with its own set of challenges. The strip is 250ft above sea level and nestled between some hills. The runway runs almost north south (15/33) and it’s common to have a sea breeze from the east that can cause some cross wind challenges for landing. The hills and vegetation can also cause wind shear, adding to the difficulties. So it’s a good opportunity to try out some skills not too far from home and with support from others. I elected to take one of the 182s (VH-ROC) and also one of the instructors from Redcliffe to provide some additional real time coaching on the approach, landing and take off. I took my son Tim too, so that he could experience the wonders of a morning flight across Moreton Bay to breakfast.

With Jarrad and Tim enroute to Straddie

We headed off about 8am, the last of about 6 planes leaving from Redcliffe, and flew straight across the bay to Moreton Island, passing over Tangalooma Resort, then flew down the west coast of Moreton to stay clear of the Brisbane traffic control zone. The waters of Moreton Bay were amazingly clear as we kept an eye out for whales and dugongs.

Hues of blue in Moreton Bay

Crossing the small strait between Moreton and Straddie, we descended to about 1250ft , passed over the town of Dunwich with its ferry terminals and joined mid field cross wind for runway 15. There were a couple of planes ahead of us in the circuit so I completed a longer downwind than normal to allow them time to land. Coming in on short final I had expected some gusts but it was very calm, almost no wind at all.

Dunwich township

We had a smooth landing and taxied to join about 30 other planes that had already arrived. There was a selection from single occupancy ultralights to twin engine Cessna 310s.

Planes assembled on the side of the strip

The aeroclub had put on a great hot breakfast that we enjoyed while chatting with the other 60 or so people at the tables set up outside the club house. People had flown in from Archerfield, Toowoomba, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and other aerodromes around the region. Some said they fly in to Dunwich almost every month and have done for years.

After about an hour the planes started to leave one by one, practising soft field takeoffs from runway 17. Jarrad gave me a bit of refresher on the technique in ROC, accelerating to rotate a bit early, lifting off and then pushing the nose down to stay just above the surface in ground effect while the plane accelerated to “climb out speed”.

In ground effect picking up speed

Then I pulled the nose up and we climbed out above the surrounding hills. We headed west over towards Archerfield and did a transit through the D Class controlled airspace there and headed north past Mt Coottha to the Gap. We did an orbit over the Gap to give Tim a good view of the place he grew up. Then it was off to Redcliffe via Lake Samsonvale. All in all a very enjoyable morning.

RAAF base – beach resort – IFR – instrument flying – SR20

It was October 2015. I’d been wanting to fly into Evans Head for a while. It’s a small beach resort where our friends Anne and Harpur had a beach house and it has a great little airport on the town’s outskirts that was a major RAAF base during WWII. They have a very interesting museum that contains among other things an F1-11 that used to be based at Amberley. So I organised a training flight down there with instructor Adam Starr in a Flight One Cirrus SR20. It was great weather again and we flew down through the Gold Coast controlled airspace (CTA). We’d intended to fly over the top of the Gold Coast airport but there was some military activity so we were routed at 1,500ft around the western edge of the Gold Coast just to the east of the hinterland hills. We spotted a couple of F18 jets flying up the coast as we headed south.

After leaving the controlled air space we continued on over the border into New South Wales and past Byron Bay and eventually to Evans Head. It was about 45 minutes flying time from Archerfield. Evans Head is located just to the north of an RAAF training area and there is controlled air space above the airport itself so it meant descending to 1,000ft to stay under the CTA. We noted that the smoke from a sugar refinery was blowing to the south so knew we’d have to land towards the north. This was not the best as it meant doing a tight turn to avoid the CTA to the south but it was still ok. On short final we noticed a few kangaroos!! on the runway. Luckily they cleared off so we didn’t have to go around. We pulled up at the parking area and paid the $7.25 landing fee in the honesty box (you have to love these country airfields).

Evans Head Memorial Airport

After a short break we headed west and flew over to Cherrabah Station out towards Stanthorpe. There was a bit of puffy cumulus cloud around and as Adam knew I was planning to do my private instrument rating he said “how about we upgrade to IFR and fly through the cloud rather than around it?” “Can we do that?” I asked. “Sure, we just have to request it from ATC”. So he got on the radio and soon we were upgraded to IFR and began climbing to 7,000 ft through the clouds. It was amazing as we burst out of a cloud and had the vista of the rolling green hills and cumulus clouds in front of us. A bit of autopilot training followed as we headed  in and out of the clouds back to Archerfield.

Sunshine Coast – Glasshouse Mountains

In 2015, after completing my PPL, I started doing solo cross country flights. One of the first was from Redcliffe, where the aeroclub is based, up to Double Island Point north of the Sunshine Coast. It was a perfect blue sky day with minimal cloud and ideal for flying. Passing over the Sunshine Coast Airport at Maroochydore at 1,500 ft was fun, as was the flight up the Mooloola Coast to Double Island Point. With Fraser Island in the background the view took my breath away. I headed back over Lake Cootharabah to Maleny using it as a dead reckoning exercise to get me there. It all worked well with very little in the way of adjustments required. I made it back to Redcliffe via the Glasshouse Mountains and Caboolture.