Than you kindly to all who have responded so far. No matter how little or how much information and intelligence that each, and every one of you has proffered to the cause, you can rest assured that I am doing my best to take it all on board. I do appreciate the common thrust in regard to objectives aligning more closely to that of the Recreational Aviation side of things, as opposed to General Aviation. I must say that having browsed the websites of an exhaustive number of flying training organisations, in recent times, I truly am shocked at the status quo, in terms of hire prices nowadays!
That all being said, I am not deterred by cost this time around, however money is inevitably a handy thing to have, and as such all of your concerns in regard to GA proper have been heeded. I will certainly be giving the RAA aspect an intensively thorough examination, prior to making any decision as to which direction I choose to proceed in.
Somewhat of a Caveat Emptor to all of the information I have offered up so far, in regard to my position and intentions, is the fact that my Pilot's Logbook of old has managed to magically disappear. I do not for the life of me remember whether I had made reference to this fact in my original post and I truly cannot feel the compulsion to rifle through said post in order to find it, hence I have made mention of it now.
Back in the far, far distant past of 2011, I was living at a different premises and in a different situation. Since then I have moved not once, not twice, but indeed thrice. Thus, the location of my Logbook which was with me from the commencement of my flight training at the tender age of sixteen, up until my Phoenix effort with Whitworth's in 2011, is now unknown. I have made contact with the aforementioned establishment in regard to its whereabouts, on the off chance that I had made the tenacious error of leaving it in a possession of someone other than I, however they were not able to shed any light on the situation either.
Therefore I would be particularly interested to explore what options, if any, that I do possess in relation to re-recording/locating my old logged hours from my previous training forays. Needless to say, I am already somewhat cognisant of the fact that said Proflite hours are more or less now non-existent, however records do still exist of the Whitworth ones from what I have been informed, albeit not in a Logbook proper!
At this point though, I shall digress and continue on course. You're welcome Lookleft and I would most certainly concur with what KRviator has stated, in regard to the myriad of private freight rail operators that now exist on the mainland. We shan't even delve into the kettle of fish that is Tasmania... Furthemore, there is somewhat of a historical prestige that seems to fall around those that command freight consists, as opposed to those of us that simply ferry the masses around the 'burbs in horizontal elevators. That being said, I'd like to think that I take pride in what I do and that it is equally as important. We're all brothers and sisters in the rail family after all, aren't we? :P
Finally, Nibbles, I am more than aware of the operator that you refer to, however I am sorry to say that said person is categorically not I. To this point, I have never been employed in such a profession, however I have at one stage owned and ran a bus privately, purely for recreational purposes.. I would also argue the fact that said recreational bus ownership was significantly more costly than flying, and on a much shorter time scale to boot.
Oh, and while I'm at it, thank you kindly again to all and sundry, and I do look forward to a continued dialogue regarding my attempted comeback. If anyone else out there has a similar story, successful or otherwise, I would most definitely be interested in hearing it!
My next move is to do the old 'ring around' and find out just what organisation meets my goals and objectives, and can facilitate my training for a reasonable price, along with a reasonable time frame.
At this point, I can all hear you collectively saying a somewhat sarcastic and lethargic 'Good luck', however I am not deterred by the woeful state of affairs regarding pricing and whatnot, and will proceed on this journey, RAA or GA, in one guise or another.
Until next time...
Train_Driver