Tony Wheeler

The First Flight to Australia

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:06:47 -0800

In November last year, driving up the coast from Galway in Ireland, I came to the lonely stretch of Irish bog where Alcock and Brown touched down on 15 June 1919 after making the first flight across the Atlantic. Later I went to the Science Museum in London to look at the big, ungainly Vickers Vimy biplane with its open cockpit which they’d used for that epic flight.

Last week I visited the Aviation Heritage Museum in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory and encountered information on another pioneering flight with a Vickers Vimy. The museum features a USAF B-52, which seems altogether too big to squeeze into the hangar.

There’s also a pretty little De Havilland Dove from Transportes Aéreos de Timor which I’m pretty sure I saw in Baucau in Portuguese Timor when Maureen and I travelled through Timor in 1974, on the trip which led to the very first edition of South-East Asia on a Shoestring.

There’s also some interesting material about the 1919 race from London to Darwin which was won by a four man crew in, once again, a Vickers Vimy. The two pilots – Ross Smith and Keith Smith – were brothers and the epic flight set out from London on 12 November 1919 and arrived in Darwin 24 stops and 28 days later on 10 December. The tale of the race is told in Austrlalia's Greatest Air Race by Nelson Eustis.






The progress in air travel is remarkable, a 100metre flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, 5 years later Louis Bleriot flies 37km across the English Channel from France to England. Fast forward another 11 years and we have 3000km flights across the Atlantic and flights, with plenty of stops, all the way from England to Australia.

Another 15 years later in 1934 another air race sees a flight from London to Melbourne in Australia, stopping in Darwin of course, in less than 72 hours. This time it was a purpose-built racing aircraft, a De Havilland DH-88 Comet (twin piston engined, not the jet airliner Comet of the 1950s). And a DC-2 airliner entered by the Dutch airline KLM was only 12 hours behind. The museum also features displays on that journey.

Flying over the Kimberley â?? Again

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:57:36 -0800

Last September Maureen and I went out the Kimberley Coastal Camp on Port Warrender in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. We flew out there in a single-engined Cessna 210, a couple of hours flight from the town of Broome with a non-stop gallery of amazing views appearing below us. We liked the Kimberley Coastal Camp so much that when we returned to Darwin in the Northern Territory last week for a friend’s daughter’s wedding we took a bunch of our friends for a return trip.

Approaching the Kimberley from the east rather that the west was equally spectacular. This time we were in a larger (although still single-engined) Cessna Caravan and the 650km flight again took about 2-1/2 hours. As we took off from Darwin we could see the US Navy’s amphibious assault ship the USS Peliliu (a small aircraft carrier to you and me) and the USS Pearl Harbor in dock below. Darwin has a Pearl Harbor connection, just 10 weeks after Mitsuo Fuchida led the Pearl Harbor attack he led the same Japanese aircraft from the same aircraft carriers on 19 February 1942 to attack Darwin. More bombs were dropped by more aircraft and sank more ships that day in Darwin than at Pearl Harbor just 10 weeks earlier. Pearl Harbor was only attacked once, 58 more attacks on Darwin were to follow.

We flew over the Northern Territory for about an hour then crossed Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, keeping close to  the northern edge of the Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve, a huge flatlands with wonderful braided river patterns. It’s a Ramsar Wetland which is home to over 200 bird species which makes it very popular with bird watchers.

Then our flight took us across the eastern side of the Kimberley, a series of rivers, many of them – like the Drysdale River – still carrying water just a couple of months into the dry season.

Finally we took a couple of turns over the magnificent Mitchell Falls, probably Australia’s most spectacular waterfall, before we landed at the Mitchell Falls Plateau Airstrip. Next blog I’ll report from the Kimberley Coastal Camp.

Feeding the Fish, Feeding the Crocs, Feeding the Humans, Releasing the Fish

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:33:23 -0800

Feeding wildlife is widely regarded as ‘not advisable,’ despite which plenty of it gets fed in Australia’s Northern Territory. Aquascene is one of Darwin’s big attractions, particularly for children. Every day at high tide the local fish have learnt to swim in to Doctor’s Gully, a stone’s throw from the centre of Darwin, for a free meal. You can stand on the water’s edge or wade in a few steps and fish like these mullet will eat out of your hand. The batfish are more spectacular.

Then head out towards Kakadu about 100km to the Adelaide River crossing where you can join a boat to visit the famous jumping crocodiles. Crocodiles have been known to leap out of the water to snatch an unwary bird off a branch, here they do their leaping to grab tempting porkchops held out for them on a line. Is it a good idea to encourage monster crocodiles to leap out of the water at passing boats? Perhaps not, but there haven’t been any mishaps to date and it’s certainly spectacular. Click here for more on my previous visit to the region, back in 2007.

Heading back to Darwin with out friends we stopped in at the Humpty Doo Hotel for lunch. It’s a down-to-earth outback pub and according to its sign it’s not just ‘famous’ but ‘world famous.’

Maureen and I opted for a ‘Barra Burger with the Lot’ which meant barramundi (the classic Top End fish), topped with pineapple, bacon, egg, cheese and salad including that most important Aussie-burger ingredient beetroot. Between the two of us a single Humpty Doo Barraburger hit the hangover spot, we’d drunk rather a lot at a wedding the previous night.

Finally out at the Kimberley I went fishing. Now I am no fishing expert and to be honest have no real interest in hauling fish on to boats, but if you’re at a place famous for its fishing I guess you have to try it. So here’s the GT – giant trevally – pulled in. We tossed it back and it swum off.

 

The Melbourne Solar System - extended version

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:38:12 -0800

The Melbourne Solar System has extended by a few light years to Proxima Centauri.







The new model of Proxima Centauri, our nearest star.

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Joggers pass the Sun in St Kilda.
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Helping to put together the Melbourne Solar System, a one to one billion scale model of the Solar System was one of my favourite projects in recent years. You can start on the bayside in St Kilda (Melbourne’s backpacker central) and head out past Mercury (58metres), Venus (108metres), Earth (150metres) and Mars (227metres), the four inner planets, and then continue to the outer ones, finally reaching lonely Pluto 5.9km away and two suburbs along the bay.

Now the model has been extended by 4.2 light years. Which is 40 trillion km or, at our one to one billion scale, about 40,000km. Start at the model of the sun, make a complete circuit of the earth, passing over the south and north pole, and 40,000km later you’ll find yourself right back where you started, with a model of the nearest star to our own star, the Sun.

Car Sharing

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:28:25 -0800

Bicycle sharing schemes are all the go – I’ve posted blogs about my experiences with them in Melbourne (where the Melbourne Bike Share scheme launched just a few weeks ago) and in Paris (I was in Paris in 2007, not long after the Vélib’ scheme launched).

Car sharing schemes are also spreading around the world. You join up and you’re issued with a swipe card. The cars are parked at key points around the city.

When you want a car you find the nearest available one that’s free on the web, book it online, swipe your card over the card reader in the car, get in and drive away. Compared to a regular rent-a-car there’s no paperwork, you don’t have to go to a rent-a-car office, fuel is included and you can get a car by the hour, not just by the day

In the USA Zipcar is number one, they have 6000 cars in around 50 American cities. That’s almost half of all the car sharing vehicles worldwide. Zipcar also operate in London – where I live for part of the year – and I’ve recently signed up there, although I’ve yet to try it out. In Australia Flexicar is the biggest operator in Melbourne where I also live for part of the year. My Car Club is number one in Sydney and Go Get is a third Australian car sharing operator.

I don’t own a car in London and most of the time public transport (the tube, the tube) and taxis get me around just fine, but I know I’ll find my Zipcar useful from time to time. In Australia I’ve got two cars (a Lotus Europa and a Toyota Prius) so I don’t need to join a car sharing scheme, but I thought it would be interesting to give it a go. So I joined Flexicar, got my card, booked a car called ‘Farmer John’ in nearby Richmond, pedaled over to it on my Brompton bicycle and away I went, with the bike in the boot. Farmer John was a Honda Civic Hybrid and we covered 45km around the city in the next few hours, averaging 6.5km per 100 litres (45 mpg imperial, 40 mpg US), not bad, but not quite as good as my Prius.

Obviously allocating car share parking spots has to be worked out in agreement with local city councils. Most of them realize how environmentally sensible car sharing is and how allocating one car share parking space frees up lots of regular spots. Nevertheless In Melbourne, Australia the council covering the young, inner city suburbs of South Yarra and Prahran, ideal territory for car sharing, has been slow to catch up with the idea.

A Bird Song Contest

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:41:38 -0800

Driving along the west coast of the Thai island of Ko Samui I came upon a bird singing contest. There’s a rectangular area with four clothesline-like wires run down it. Hung from the wires are bird cages, in groups of 4 by 4, so 16 in a group. There were 7 groups in all (so 112 bird cages) plus perhaps 20 or 30 more either non-starters, held in reserve or something!

The birds are all red-whiskered bulbul (nok krong hua juck) and just as I arrive the covers are swept off the cages and the contest starts. At a whistle sound they all start to sing, their owners (all male) listening intently. After 30 seconds the whistle is blown again and a marker-pen-toting scorer moves in to each group of 16 and marks the some of the red cards hanging beneath the cages.


The whistle blows again and another scoring period commences. What’s it all about? How do you score them? With 100+ birds all chirping away together how do you separate one from the other? I’ve no idea, but it was fascinating. Click here for a link to a paper on dove cooing contests in Thailand, which also mentions the red-whiskered bulbul.

Hotels - cheap & expensive, good & bad

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:17:05 -0800

Last week I was in Macau speaking at a hotel conference, most of the conference was numbers and business,  but my talk was light relief, hotels I’ve loved and hated, whether they were cheap – the Chhaya Hotel in Battambang, Cambodia in 2005 was US$4 and just fine. Click here for my interesting stay in Battambang.

â?? Hotel Chhaya

Or expensive, the Homestead at El Questro in the Kimberley region of Western Australia a year earlier was close to US$1000 and I loved it.


El Questro

Click here for more

 

Throwim Way Leg

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:18:01 -0800

Last week I was listening to Tim Flannery as the ‘curator’ of the Deakins Lectures, a series of 10 lectures, addresses and discussions on the subject of climate change. Tim is a man of many hats from running the South Australian Museum to being Australian of the year in 2007.

I’ve also got around to reading his first book, Throwim Way Leg, the pidgin English term for going on a long walk. It’s a great tale of exploration and discovery in a country that’s still coming to terms with the modern world. Tim sees some amazing places, discovers some unusual creatures (previously uncatalogued animal life is still turning up in New Guinea), but his book is also a reminder that travel in the back block of Papua New Guinea can be a tough proposition. There are lots of horrible diseases, infections, ailments, disorders, complaints and illness waiting for even the healthiest back country walker.

Nor is it a happy place politically and ecologically, the collision between mining companies and local populations have often been disastrous, as he discovers when he visits the Freeport gold and copper mine in Irian Jaya, the Indonesian side of the island.

The Explorers

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:53 -0800

Tim Flannery’s book The Explorers (Text Publishing) is a wonderful collection of short excerpts from more than 50 predominantly early explorers. All the big names are here, William Dampier, James Cook, Joseph Banks, Matthew Flinders, Ludwig Leichardt, William Wills (Robert O’Hara Bourke didn’t write enough to be worth recording!), John McDouall Stuart, but others much less well known. Some favourites:

• Arthur Bowes Smyth – a magical account of an early visit to Lord Howe Island, so untouch- ed birds don't even try to escape their cooking pot destination

• Te Pahi – a Maori visitor to Sydney who’s regularly appalled by the English colonists’ behaviour, ‘OK execute somebody for stealing something of permanence, like a metal tool, but for stealing food, something that passes through you and is gone?’
• John Batman – the unscrupulous ‘founder’ of Melbourne, who would have quite liked to call the city after himself, in which case the citizens of the city would be Batmanians.
• Warrup – an Aboriginal companion to an early explorer – it’s all ‘onward, onward, onward’ and ‘away, away, away’ or ‘through the forest, through the forest, through the forest.’
• Ernest Giles – there are frequent reminders that exploring Australia was dangerous, thirsty and bloody hard work, none better than this account of losing a companion who wanders off in the wrong direction.
• W J Peasley – and here we are in 1977 tracking down what may be the last two Aboriginals leading a traditional nomadic life.

Illegal Photographs

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:56:25 -0800

Over the years I’ve taken plenty of photographs in subway systems around the world. Here’s the state-of-the-art Hong Kong MTR system just last week.



Here’s an example of the artwork at the aviation-focussed Metro Mayakovskaya station in Moscow. Click here for more Moscow metro photos, Stalin may have had other faults, but he certainly built a beautiful subway.

â?? Metro Mayakovskaya Station


Click here for more

Round Ko Samui

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:26:11 -0800

I’ve got a number of Robert Powell paintings hanging in my house, like this one of Preah Khan dancers at Angkor Wat which hangs over my bed.


So a visit to Robert’s house on the Thai island of Ko Samui was a good excuse for a stopover between Melbourne and London in July. I’ve already blogged about my encounter with a bird song contest while I was driving around the island.

Other stops included a visit to Wat Kunaram, where a head monk’s naturally mummified (‘underdecomposed’ the sign says) body, complete with stylish sunglasses, sits in a glass showcase.

And to Hin Ta and Hin Yai, Grandpa and Grandma rocks. Grandpa is very phallic, Grandma the female equivalent. They’re nice natural rock formations, but like so much of Ko Samui reached via an obstacle course of tat and rubbish. Much of the island really is an unattractive mess

Recent additions to the island’s tourist attractions include Wat Plai Laem’s 18-armed seated figure of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercyand a similarly sized fat Chinese Buddha. These two recent kitsch attractions were financed by the Bangkok Airways boss, who clearly has philanthropic instincts, even if they aren’t combined with good taste.

More Aboriginal Art at the Kimberley Coastal Camp

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:10:14 -0800

Last year I visited the Kimberley Coastal camp and blogged about the amazing Aboriginal art around the camp. Last week Maureen and I were back there again. And once again I was simply blown away by the variety and quantity of Aboriginal art in the area. Like this handprint, a technique common in Aboriginal art throughout Australia.

A group of us travelled up the Lawley River, a wide mangrove-fringed creek with lots of birdlife (wading birds in particular including a big, awkward looking jabiru) and the occasional crocodile sunning itself on the mudbanks. You’re regularly warned about the dangers of encountering a croc on even the most innocuous stretch of water. On my last morning I walked down to a nearby beach and this one surfaced like a submarine just a few feet away.

Back on the Lawley we have to wait for the tide to rise a bit so we can clear a rocky bar across the river and then, as the river bends off into the rocky country we left the boat and walk for a couple of km inland. There’s still plenty of water flowing down the creek, but soon it will dry up to waterholes and billabongs and then dry even more before the next wet season arrives.

We reach a burial site – the body was covered with rocks, later the rocks were cleared and the bones removed. From there it’s on to a series of art sites, with some impressive Bradshaws/Gwion Gwion figures, mixed, as usual, with the later Wandjina figures.

 

 

Macau - where smoking makes you unlucky

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:06:52 -0800

I stayed in the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel (to give its full name) in Macau last week. Just imagine Las Vegas (where there’s also a Venetian Hotel) and then think bigger. Much bigger. It’s one of the biggest buildings in the world, enough floor space to park 90 747s according to their website.

It also comes with a ‘Grand Canal’ and two other stretches of ‘canal,’ on the 3^rd floor. Complete with gondolas and singing gondoliers who’ll row you along the canal between the 300+ ‘shoppes’ for a trifling MS108 (about US$14) per person, probably cheaper than the real thing would cost you in Italy.

Click here for more

The Dig Tree

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:53:27 -0800

Back in 1991 Maureen and I, with our daughter Tashi (10 years old at the time) and our son Kieran (aged 8), set out to drive from Melbourne to Cooper Creek near the town of Innamincka in South Australia. We were following the track of the Burke & Wills expedition, easily Australia’s most famous – and most disastrous – journey of exploration. Along the way I read Alan Moorehead’s classic Cooper’s Creek about the ill-starred journey. I’ve just finished reading Sarah Murgatroyd’s The Dig Tree, which tells the tale with a more modern outlook, including looking at the expedition’s interaction with the Aboriginals they encountered along the route.


The ‘Dig Tree’ still stands beside Cooper Creek, I took this photo in 1991.

Click here for more

Hong Kong

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:39:27 -0800

No matter how many times you go there there’s always something new. On my way to and from Macau last week I had three nights in Hong Kong – on Lamma Island, in Central and in Kowloon. Of course one thing never seems to change in Hong Kong, the Star Ferry still shuttles back and forth across the harbour for about 25c US. One of the world’s great travel bargains.







Lamma Island is a short ferry trip from Hong Kong Central and I spent a night there at a friend’s place. In the morning I made a pre-breakfast walk to the north end of the island, watched a commuter ferry arrive and depart at Pak Kok Village and gazed across to nearby Hong Kong Island.


Staying in busy Tsim Sha Tsui, the peninsula of Kowloon on the mainland, I raced down to the waterfront promenade to catch the 8pm ‘Symphony of the Stars’ lightshow as buildings across the harbour in Hong Kong Central light up in time to the music. Terrific!


I had another day in Admiralty, just east of Hong Kong Central. A short walk from my hotel took me past this amusing sculpture of everyday ‘Hong Kong People’ outside the Conrad Hotel.


A few more steps and I was in Hong Kong Park with its superb Edward Youde Aviary, the perky Bali mynahs were my favourite amongst the 600 bird species they say you can find in this huge aviary. On the other side of the harbour I discovered flamingos in Kowloon Park, for some reason I’d never seen them before.

On my way to the Hong Kong Park I could see the Far East Finance Centre peeking between the twin Lippo Towers. The bright gold glass led to its local nickname ‘the Amah’s tooth.’ An Amah is a traditional, often elderly, Chinese maid and housekeeper.