I'm with you George, although the weather was better in Brissy.
I didn't particularly like the Mouse. I came from DC-3s. In really thinking about it I didn't like the aeroplane it's systems and it's being operated like a jet rather than an older generation prop aircraft that it was.
There was the fun of hoping old Rexy would stuff up one day with his cutting both engines as he left the runway and coasted in, but he was an 'old and bold' and always needed the brakes to stop her.
Ron C. when he was a FO, tried just sneaking a tiny bit of brake on to fix the old bugg*r but Rex was onto it straight away and told him to get his feet off the brakes.
There were many fun activities like landing on the grass at Maryborough and Bundy just for fun. Five hundred feet up the beach and over Green Island Being the only airliner that could take off at Brissy and all ports north in cyclones and having to fly in them.
Flying in cyclones wasn't particularly bad; lots of drift and flight planning for interesting alternates but it wasn't overly rough. One topped at about 6500 feet and we cruised way above it.
The pleasure was being with the blokes who were all uptight on getting their command and watching them relax and get naughty as their experience increased.
They taught me heaps and slowly I stopped dying the death before and during checks from ostmosis.
Half them smoked like chimneys in the cockpit and all except Rexy mucked in doing the job.
Rexy left the lot to the F O specially on overnights when he talked to the groundstaff and left us to put 'er to bed and again in the morning we were left to get the locks 'n chocks out, do our job AND his, while he chatted to the pax in the terminal and carried little kids out to the aircraft for their mothers.
That got him in the end. The poor blo*dy FO managed to forget the nose gear lock in the mad rush to get everything ready after arriving at the drome much later than normal as was the way with our Rexy.
When the nose gear didn't come up, Old Rexy knew immediately why ... (previous experience someone has kept Stchoom about for decades?)
This time the gear collapsed and DCA was in on it.
FO got nailed to the wall and was about to be flogged with barbed wire when one of the more unpopular DCA coves said, "Wait a minute... isn't it the Captain's responsibility..."
The F O didn't get the sack after all and proved beyond doubt that he was a fine operator by later becoming a popular Check Captain.
We FLEW the Mouse and learned our craft from blokes who'd been taught airmanship from blokes who'd been taught airmanship from old Waries and chaps who'd flown with Kingsford Smith.
Too bad we lost that knowlege base a couple of decades ago and now read the laments of pilots who are overworked, haven't had that grounding and are going to train 200 hour cadets to operate auto pilots that do exactly what's in-putted into computers while scootin' along at eight miles a minute.