March, 4th

Oh well, it would have been to nice if everything would have worked out smoothly! Now we are stuck here in Serpentine until Monday - because we have to wait for spare parts. But I should tell you the story from the beginning. After having had to return our rental car ahead of time (the battery was empty, we couldn't even push it to start) Dennis Gorton had given us a lift to the airfield. Dennis and his wife live in a small retirement community. You have to be at least 55 years old to move there. All small one story bungalows with a backyard, all houses have two bedrooms (for snorers or for visitors?...) At the airfield the "doctor" had started already. That's the name for a breeze coming from the ocean that provides a little cooling from the heat. Nevertheless we were sweating like crazy by the time we assembled Giselas microlight. Of course the battery was dead, too, so I had to start the propeller myself. And then it happened. Gisela was ready for her first flight and I had my videocamera on standby. The winds had picked up. While rolling on the concrete runway it picked up the wing from the back and the trike fell forward on the wings. Sh....

Gisela was fine but the connection between the wing and the trike was bent! Nothing that could be fixed. So I had to keep calm, try to console Gisela and get things done. We found out very quick that there is no Mainair-Dealer in Australia. Finally, when the working day started in Great Britain, I had a nice talk with Roger Pattrick and ordered the spare parts. DHL will bring them to us on Monday. That didn't help to improve Giselas spirits. So we didn't discuss what to do in the meantime!

But that wasn't all the bad news yet. Of course we switched on the "fleetfinder" as well. With our luck I wanted to make sure whether our signals would reach Germany. Unfortunately - so we were told by OHB - the Fleetfinder-Server had been worked on and down for hours. No way for us to find out if you will receive our signals.

At the airfield we had already made friends with Ian and Sally, who invited us for a nice barbecue. Then appeared Paul and Tom who spared us from a night on the floor of the clubhouse and offered us a doublebed in their mobile home. What else did we learn today? Well, kangaroos are an endangered species under protection, we know now where to find the Southern Cross and we are very impressed by the hospitality of the Australian pilots.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the guy from Bremen we met in Sydney! Well, he usually stands in front of Radio Bremen headquarters behind some bushes. But here in Perth you can find him 'in the open' between an artgalery and the School for Fine Arts: "The Shouter" by Gerhard Marcks.