March, 16th

Whyalla

Today we asked ourselves again, why we are doing this... (and we didn't find an answer yet!) The last 180 kilometers were extremely bumpy. But let me tell you about it from the beginning:

After an easy start at Penong we reached Ceduna just an hour later. This is where we leave the Nullabor-Area. Plus, we had to reset our watches again. The Australians have developed a strange system with their time-zones. While traveling eastward you have to set your watch 45 minutes ahead twice and then another half hour lateron. You figure that out...

A small two-engine passenger-plane landed in Wudinna shortly after we did. I managed to talk the pilot into showing me his weatherreport-fax.It predicted that winds would be 10 knots variable at our usual flight altitude. On the ground we already had 15 knots from the 'wrong' direction. So we had to step on the gas again and make our way up. The first part of this stretch pushed us almost to the limits of our fuel reserves. Gisela can't fill her bigger tank up all the way anymore since it has a little whole in it. We sealed it by applying an old trucker-secret: Use soap. This did prevent gas from leaking, but we still want to be carefull and restrain from filling the tank all the way. It was only shortly before we reached Ceduna that we experienced the first thermals. While approaching the airfield we were rocking in our planes and on the ground it was just plain hot with almost no winds. We had called the local BP-gas station in advance and had to wait only 5 minutes untill they showed up with our fuel. In the meantime we checked out the Mini-Terminal and I was eager to step on the scale there: 3 kilos less then I weighed when we left Germany - I was happy!

Our next route - another 180 kilometers - was the most difficult so far. Even at 5.500 feet (which equals more than 1.500 meters) we experienced severe thermals and we really needed our security belts. We weren't too thrilled by the prospect of having to fly through this for the next 2 hours - it took us only 30 minutes untill we had cramps in our hands and the arm-muscles went sore as we had to cling on to the stearing gear in order to stay put in our desired direction. After about an hour we passed Kimba - an airfield far away from Whyalla. Without discussing it - the both of us were debating on whether to land here and wait for the winds to calm down or whether we should bite our way through this for another hour. What made the decision even more difficult was the fact that we had more than 40 kilometers of forests ahead of us with absolutely no chance for an outlanding. We pulled ourselves together and fought our way through it. No one said a word. We were just trying to hold on and to cope with the winds. It was only after we had passed Iron Knob, a mountain where iron-ore is recovered by open-cast working that it calmed down a bit and that we started to relax.

The Spencer Golf coast lay ahead and the Whyalla airfield was in clear sight. Landing on the asphalt pavement runway was no problem and when we taxied towards the huge open hangar, a friendly helper waved us in. We thought that we really deserved this special treatment today. Our new friends' name is G.W. Sturges and he is a hypno-therapist and - of course - a pilot. After a little while he invited us for a ride in his car and we got a brief tour around town before he dropped us off at the Bayview Hotel. Whyalla is a small town and the main business is the mine and a big steel-factory. They also have a sub-division of the Westaustralian University here. Everything looked just a bit old-fashioned and we saw a lot of official buildings in "bauhaus"-design.

We couldn't care less about that right now, we can really use a day off right now and so we decide to spend the next two nights here.