Duck Pilot:
Flight training standards in Australia have descended to rubbish in the past 20 years.
The last 2 weeks with regards to injuries and fatalities clearly demonstrates this.
Very basic Pilot survival skills and fundamental procedures are being ignored by some pilots, resulting in accidents (how not to kill yourself and those on board your aircraft).
However there are still a few good trainers around.
Disclaimer: My personal starting point is that I know SFA about flying.
That said, and having flown into Porepunkah, I cannot understand how Mr. 182 could possibly think a pre dawn departure was acceptable from that airstrip.
As to standards, consider the idiot newly minted RAA pilot who departed Mt Beauty in a jabiru, allegedly to transit the great divide for Wollongong, in what was definitely not VFR conditions, and killed himself in the first valley he attempted.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...LY1md3EfXhvcAr
I wonder if the entire box ticking "competency based" education and assessment system is fundamentally flawed if it keeps producing pilots who keep making such flawed risk assessments.