I read this and silently weep. Weep for all the great pilots I have known and lost, the aircraft I have known and lost. My beloved DC9, my time with TAA in PNG, surely now a young pilots dream job, "mornins for flyin, afternoons for drinkin, night times for sha$$in! I think of all those young Captains in the late fifties and early sixties, all so badly damaged by war, mostly crewing the Lancaster Bombers, and somehow survived, but to go thru life never the same, just too much for a twenty year old to see and experience, and yet it was those same men, who took the airlines forward. I think of Butler, East West, Airlines of NSW, I think of Captain's Dicky Holt ( the father of bidding) Buck Brooksbank, Frank Ball, John Hickey, I think of the great Engineers, (when TAA was partly seconded to Dept of Mineral Recourses, they sent us, two young pilots and one engineer off on a adventure of a lifetime with a DC3 called MIfu%$in N, with a amazing Engineer called Russell Mc,fuc%^n Nee,) three young men, who lived a dream. Imagine now sending three people with one aircraft, to search for minerals, along with a small team of geologists, out into the GAFA (Great Australian FA) for six months, living in tents, and leaving small mountains of empty beer cans dotted on the landscape, as our proud monuments! We shed the uniforms, flying in shorts, socks, army boots, and a cap, that is until the TAA manager Capt. Frank Ball caught up with us in Boulia, and horrified that his pilots looked like two deadbeats, demanded we went back into uniform. Sadly we had lost so much weight from the heat, our uniforms almost fell off us, and so TAA sent us some natty shorts, a proper uniform shirt, totally impractical shoes, and insisted on the same uniform hat. They are all still in my wardrobe, for as soon as they left...........................? Going back to line flying was like going back to boring, you cannot have fun with a aircraft full of PAX, and we had fun with that DC3, but we all have to grow up at some stage. Now its flying by hubcaps, as my kids who now fly, call it, and envy my adventures, I would not swap one day of it.