Also I hear you 'Mach'
Fair comments.
Remember though VFR is based on far less regs meaning less to be concerned about. Also means no icing considerations, no dealing with VFR traffic once you pop out of the soup, meaning being visual in the first place you have a better chance of seeing 'farmer brown' b4 you meet head to head with him rather than at the base of the cloud if flying via the IFR. And as far as rarely doing appr's to the min? (as in once in a blue moon) Well recently I spent a week in Tassie doing some relief flying (all IFR obvioulsy) & all but say 3 approaches where real & a few I missed out on. At night every appr to an airfield was via some sort of appr often in & out of cloud. I don't know whether it's me or not but I do numerous Appr's week in week out.
The only time I believe VFR flying is harder is when your faced with WX that's not strictly VFR & yr under commercial pressure to complete the task, but then again one shouldn't be there finding themselves in that situation now should they?
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Anyway each to their own beliefs, the two rules are there for good reasons. VFR is easy I believe mostly because the eyes & what they see outside the cockpit are our most valuable tools in the decision making process
CW
p.s...........just remembered. A good little handy hint to have stored in the back of yr mind is lock in the highest LSALT in Oz, call it 8000', (you may want to modify that if yr right over Mt Kosy) an ALT that will never have you hit any 'real estate'. That way should you ever find yourself above this, (sometimes in a piston most times in a turbine) & if you need to decend quickly for any sort of reason or if yr at high flt lvl's & you have been snoozing away then it's a good starting point on the way down' 'till you figure out a lower LSALT. In Tassie 7000' works ok as a rough guide.
CW