Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB

Leg 4: Port Augusta to Ceduna

Front ~ Next - Leg 5, Ceduna to Nullarbor Motel

This was Simon's turn to fly. We departed Port Augusta around 11am. This next leg was one we were a bit concerned about. We were cutting straight across the Ayer peninsula, through a big area of nothing. Well, compared to the first leg of the day, where we stuck mostly to well-populated ares, with water, towns, and distinctive gulfs to aid our navigation, this time we had very little to go by. Of course, we have the GPS, but I like to pretend we don't have it, and use it as a backup.

After a few distinctive hills, we came into featureless scrub. This is station country. Quite safe to fly over, in terms of finding somewhere to land, but you'd probably end up a long way from anyone.

Despite the fact that there were far fewer good features for navigation, we couldn't have got lost, because there were some enormous salt lakes, which kept us roughly on track. They are huge features, and as long as you can see them in the distance, while you may not have a precise fix, you have a pretty good idea of where you are. Over the next few hours, we only saw about two or three homesteads. It makes you wonder who lives out here.

	Fuelled and ready for departure.
	A hint of what we've got ahead of us for the next couple of hours
	Not many features out there to navigate by.
	The big white salt lakes were by far the best feature for navigation. Roads and rivers were not so helpful.
	Close up view of a salt lake. These took ages to fly past.

About an hour into the flight, we encountered a fair bit of turbulence. I had been doing the smooth morning legs, leaving Simon the bumpy midday to afternoon flights. Simon really had to work hard to keep the aircraft roughly on track and altitude. We tried crusing at various heights between about 3000 and 5000 feet, but couldn't find any height where the turbulence would stop.

Features rolled past very slowly. Because the features we were using for visual navigation were enourmous salt lakes which we could see from miles away, they remained visible for a long time. It was vast and desolate country.

Towards the end, we passed over some hills, then when we were eventually past them, we were onto flat country. This country was still scrubby. There were these weird lines on the WAC, which we weren't sure what they were. As soon as I saw the rolling sanddunes, I understood the chart. We were flying over scrub-covered sand dunes. In the distance we could see farmland, then soon we saw some water beyond that. This meant that we had crossed the peninsula, and were converging on Ceduna. We overflew a vermin-proof fence, which I expected would be really easy to see, but in fact I had problems seeing it.

	The sand-dunes which we had wondered about when we saw them on the map.
	Sand-dunes turn into farmland, and then ocean beyond.

Ceduna itself is located on the edge of the water. It apparently has some good fishing, and has good oysters, and stuff like that. But it is a very remote town - it probably felt all the more remote to me because of the country we had just flown over. It's quite a long way back east to Adelaide. But then it's much further to go west, because there's not much out there except the Nullarbor Plain.

But Ceduna is actually quite a pretty location. The airstrip had a couple of different runways - we landed on the dirt one (17) instead of the tarmac, due to the wind.

We refuelled and put more oil in. The BP service station had a great service where, as well as filling up Squibby, they drove us into town for lunch, then drove us back to the airport. What a great service! We were pretty hungry, too.

	The town of Ceduna is famous for oysters. It's a long, long way from anywhere. We're a long way from Adelaide now. And West of here, there's nothing.
	We had a choice of a paved runway and a gravel one, but wind favoured gravel.
	Turning finals onto the dirt strip.
	Landed at Ceduna airport.