March, 14th

Border Village

This was a day of opposites - flying was quite boring at times, but the landings were suspensefull. We took our time this morning to re-assemble the trikes in Caiguna, to stowe away our luggage and to fill our tanks. As usual we started at full speed and went to 5.000 feet (1.500 metres above ground). Practically no winds up there so we cruised side by side across a landscape that is still entirely monotonous. Our maps indicated some sites here and there, but the caves and ruins we were supposed to see were not visible from up here. Instead we could see to the horizon. By now we are approaching the coastline, the great Australian Bay. We see the rupture rim below us - a plateau that falls straight down from 300 to 30 feet above ground.

Most of the time the Eyre-Highway is right below us, but sometimes that road winds up a hill only to continue straight for another 30 or 40 kilometres just above sea level. Although it became a little hazy we could still detect more noticeable structurs from about 50 kilometres away. We decided to make our time in the air a little more interesting by flying formations which also allowed us to take some pictures. After the first exhausting flights at the beginning of our trip we are now used to these long-distance flights. Landing is still another matter, though. Take Madura for example. It was obvious that the Streetplanners hadn't spoken with the Airfield-planners there!

The airfield is up high on a plateau while the gas station had to be down in the valley. Groundwinds pushed with almost 20 knots across the landing stretch. We both had a hard time landing the trikes and an even harder time trying to park them and to keep them on the ground. Although we had been flying over the gas station a couple of times to announce our arrival, no one showed up at the airfield to help us with re-fueling. So I went off with our 10-litre canister for what turned out to be a 15 minute hike. At the gas station, the owner had just left and no one else was willing to give us a hand. So I picked up our little canister and went back, another 15 minutes. I was just getting ready for my second of five necessary trips to the gas station when finally someone showed up with his car to help. Now we finished re-fueling in no time.

Back in the air the next stop was going to be Eucla. Here we had the opposite situation with the airfield down in the valley and the gas station way up the hill. 15 kilometres further East we could already see Border Village. There you have not only the border between West- and South-Australia but also another time-change of 45 minutes (?!) We tried to approach Border Village but had to give up and land in Eucla instead because of dangerous side-winds.

In Eucla we were lucky with the direction of the wind also being the direction of our approach, but on the ground we had wind gusts of 20 knots and more and were thus unable to move our trikes at all. Parking the trikes to get fuel was out of the question. Finally a German tourist-couple came by, helped us out with some of their fuel and even drove us to the gas station. Gisela had only one thought on her mind: to leave for Nullabor where we could land and taxi right to the gas station. Plus, she really had enough of this windy place. We had just taken off when a low layer of clouds appeared in front of us. It was just wonderfull to look at them from above as they were illuminated by the sunrays. In between our daydreaming we had to mind the coming sunset.

Our GPS indicated sunset to be at 5:45 PM, that would be in 35 minutes! Nullabor was still about two hours flight time away. So we went back and hoped for better conditions when landing in Border Village. This time it was a Dutch tourist who helped us out so that we could disassemble the wings for the night. After we had checked into the nearby roadhouse we realized what an exhausting day this has been.