Gday former colleagues. Joined Countryair in Otober 1970 when Ray Heiniger’s departure left a vacancy. Left November ’73 to fly for Nationwide and stayed in RK with successive operators till 1980. Fond memories of the atmosphere around that airport and its two after-work focal points, Aero Club and Countryair. Remember the ’74 floods well, when up to 8 DC9s were parked on 04/22 at times because everywhere else required Adelaide + 60 or similar, and they had to park until they could find somewhere to go.
Then there were two thunderstorm events a couple of weeks apart that destroyed numerous aircraft including Ansett Twin Otter – I watched that from the control tower, having turned back from the Mackay paper run due TSs, tied down the little Cherokee (140), taken a couple of bundles of papers to TAA to get them on the night flight to Mackay, sheltered my tiny Fiat inside the passenger lounge, and gone up to the tower to watch the big green-looking thunderstorm. It even shook the brick control tower, with foliage flying past the windows, and when we could eventually see the ground below, there was the Ansett Twin Otter lying on its back on the lawn. It even pulled my little Cherokee’s tiedowns out by the roots and cartwheeled it across a couple of hundred metres along with several others. That storm however turned out to be a great day for general aviation because Ansett handed over its Emerald/Clermont/Barcaldine/Longreach contract first to Countryair, then Nationwide, then Burnett Airways, and finally Bushies, which more or less coincided with my career path for several years.
The runway works were a bit of a hoot too. The first time a BIG STRETCHED B727-200 landed at RK the fireies (remember Vince?) went out to see if such a monster could land on the runway without breaking it, and found a hole in the bitumen that had nothing to do with the Whispering T-Jet, it was a cave-in of one of the tunnels under the runway that had been prepared to be filled with explosives to welcome the Japanese invaders in 1944. Nobody was sure if the explosives had actually been left there, and the only map the contractors had must have been the one that was going to be left behind to fool the Japs, so locating all the trenches and pumping concrete into them became a challenge. The shorter runway 04/22 was a bit of a challenge for the DC-9s too. And when they'd finished 15/33 they discovered there were tunnels under 04/22 as well, unfortunately one of the tunnels they filled with concrete turned out to be part of the water drainage system, which was discovered after the next deluge.
Tn Man, it was two 44 gallon drums of cold bitumen (Colas), not one, in the Cherokee Sixes, and unless you had a couple of large batteries in the nose locker, you didn't have to flare at GKL, you just relaxed the forward pressure a bit.
“Captain Stubby” sold one of Don’s old Comanches to one of his student pilots, then married her and took up residence at her ranch not far from Biloela. It was on the direct track from Rocky, and on the early morning flight we used to keep him in touch with aviation with a "three-Lycoming salute" - a Trislander out of sync at 500 feet sounds a bit like a collision at Mount Panorama.
Plenty more Rock Vegas stories but you’d think I was exaggerating.
Last edited by Paul Phelan; 4th Mar 2013 at 01:30.