Low Flying in Australia in the 1960s
In the mid 1960s I had the great pleasure of flying No 36 Squadron RAAF A-Model Hercules on an exchange tour for two and a half years (the C17s mentioned above are also No 36 Squadron aircraft, you'll note).
Whilst observing a transit flight, early in my conversion training, the flight engineer asked the captain if we might 'take a look' at his home town, which we then did, flying extremely low over the rooftops. I felt sure that this had to be breaking every rule in the book, and when a couple of days later the engineer came into the crew room brandishing a newspaper that had a photo of 'our' aeroplane on the front page, I thought that we would have a lot of explaining to do - but No - the journalist had given his article the heading, 'Our Town honoured by Visit of Giant Hercules'. That brought home to me that I had entered different world!
Indeed, later on, after I had been elevated to command, I sometimes descended early to waggle the wings at some folks I knew lived in a property just north of Inverell. Also, low flying over the empty airspace above the Blue Mountains just a short distance from Richmond RAAF Base after completing a weekend post-maintenance air test was an absolute joy (although I did once manage a bird strike - on a pelican!)
But what really struck me was how much the Australian population appreciated their Air Force - and showed it - at every opportunity when we landed at some Outback strip, or Air Show. Fantastic!