Just to try to tie off the loose end raised by andrewr and what is and isn’t an “aerodrome”, as with most matters aviation in Australia it’s necessary to look at the history to see the various points at which poorly-implemented, sectional interest-motivated ‘reforms’ occurred, to assist in identifying where some of the prevailing and chronic confusion arises about what was and was not a ‘non-towered aerodrome’.
The original CARs were made in 1988. Unlike the 2000 + pages of simple and clear regulations Australia has today, back in 1988 the regulations were an extraordinarily complex 155 pages long.
Back then regulation 92(2) relevantly said:
An aircraft shall not land at, or take off from, any place unless:
(a) the place is an aerodrome established under the Air Navigation Regulations;
(b) the use of the place as an aerodrome is authorised by a licence granted under regulation 88;
(c) the use of the place as an aerodrome is authorised by the Authority under regulation 89 [and various operational criteria were satisfied].
Note that aircraft
weren’t allowed to land at or take off from anywhere else.
The third category above was known as ‘authorised landing areas’. They were what the name suggested: areas that the Authority had authorised.
As you can envisage, the process for obtaining authorisation from the Authority for an ALA required the satisfaction of various physical criteria, and the Authority gave lots of directions about the use of ALAs. Key point: Therefore, back then,
there weren’t many ALAs and the existence, location of, and the required procedures at, all of them were known to everyone.
The term “authorised landing area” was used, deliberately, to distinguish between them and “licensed aerodromes”. Note there was no concept of an ‘unlicensed aerodrome’. The place had to be licensed as an aerodrome, or authorised by the Authority and ‘in the system’ (or established under the ANRs – effectively an international airport), or you simply weren’t allowed to operate there. (‘Ultralight’ activities were a related but separate issue, authorised by an exemption subject to many conditions.)
Putting some cones or gable markers around a flat paddock did
not turn the place into a place at which aircraft were allowed to take off or land, much less a licensed aerodrome. At most, the place
might have become an ALA if the Authority decided to authorise it.
The concept of a paddock being an “aerodrome” was never in the aviation lexicon.
Then a fundamental regulatory change occurred.
The ‘ALA’ part of regulation 92 was changed so that no authorisation was required from the Authority to use a place for take off or landing. The test in the regulation was, and remains, merely that the place be “suitable” for the purposes of taking off and landing of the particular aircraft, having regard to all circumstances of the proposed landing or take-off. There is no requirement for the place to have cones or gable markers or anything else that is usually associated with an aerodrome. If the back paddock at my property is long enough and flat enough for me to take off and land in my Genericorp Jizzler, in VMC and with the right wind conditions, I’m allowed to take off and land my Genericorp Jizzler from and at my back paddock, in VMC and with the right wind conditions. One kind of aircraft – a helicopter – can land at and take off from almost anywhere.
Thus an almost infinite number of places became what used to be called ALAs and, by definition, nobody knows where they are all located. Almost anywhere can, in some circumstances, be suitable for the take off and landing of some kind of aircraft.
(The remnants of the original ALA concept – in which the first “A” stood for “authorised” – can be seen in the current regulatory and guidance materials, some of which define ALA to mean “aircraft landing area” and others of which define ALA to mean “aeroplane landing area”. )
If:
(1) almost anywhere can, in some circumstances, be suitable for the take off and landing of some kind of aircraft, and
(2) anywhere that can, in some circumstances, be suitable for the take off and landing of some kind of aircraft is, for the purposes of the rules, an ‘aerodrome’,
.... it follows that everyone below a few thousand feet AGL is always in the vicinity of an almost infinite number of ‘aerodromes’, and therefore should be continuously broadcasting inbound or overflying ‘everywhere’.
I think the ‘depicted on charts’ and ‘defined area’ concepts are among the attempts to distinguish between ‘places’ that are known to everyone, and the rules therefore treat as aerodromes, always, and other ‘places’ that are not known to anyone except users, in which case the place becomes an aerodrome for the purposes of the rules when, and only during the period in which, it is being used for take off or landing.
Or perhaps I’m confused.
(In parallel with this was the oh-so-successful sell-off or abandonment, by the Commonwealth, of licensed aerodromes. Many of the transferees of those licensed aerodromes discovered that maintaining the standards for a licensed aerodrome needs “work” and “money”, and lots of transferees decided to “stuff this for a joke”. Thus many places that were once licensed aerodromes in effect became ALAs, but everyone kept calling them aerodromes because they continued to look and smell like aerodromes. Many of them are now “uncertified and unregistered” aerodromes (or warehouses…). You can imagine trying (and failing) to keep up with all these changes on maps and charts.)
Never fear: It will all become clear when the new rules are finished. According to the ASRR Panel report, the ETA is now 2019. Can’t wait!