Flying Across Australia in the Mouse

Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB

When I went to the aviation shop to buy maps for my journey, I needed six or seven WACs (world aeronautical charts) to cover the planned route. The guy in the shop said he occasionally gets pilots from overseas phone up asking for 'the WAC for Australia', when in fact there are more than forty maps comprising the whole set! This trip gave me a new understanding of how big this continent is. For example, according to this site, the direct distance between Melbourne and Perth is greater than London to, say, Instanbul or Moscow.

We crossed from East to West, and it took us around 20 hours of flying time. Most of the time, we clung to the coast. Although at times we felt very remote - in truth we were never too far from civilisation. The scary thing to consider is that out to the north of us, there is just nothing there. Much of Australia is a "Designated Remote Area", meaning that you need to take special precautions when flying in those regions. Consider that each square on my WAC (my main map) is around 30x30 nautical miles. On some squares of the map, the poor old cartographers are struggling to provide a single feature which can be used for aerial navigation in 1000 square miles!

Even though we had a tailwind the whole way, it was not a fast trip. Our feelings were only slightly hurt when we met motorists who pointed out that they drove across in less time than we took to fly.

But we got the views...