If there's any better way to wake up than a mate texting you and saying 'are you coming flying', I'd like to hear it. I've known this guy for 18 years and it's the first time I've been up - mainly as he thought I was chicken, which I denied a few weeks ago.
Dean makes his own planes and has a runway on his property, where him and his partner fly from - daily surf checks along the Great Ocean Road or over to the island she grew up on off the coast of Tasmania.
It's certainly an amazing way to see your home. I know I live in a beautiful place, but to see the place from the sky after fifty five years of existence is wild.
I thought of Dad - when he was on the way out Dean took him up. How cool he got to see this before he sailed off into the great blue. We've set a date for throwing his ashes to sea and he'll be drifting in all that ocean I could see from the plane. Beautiful.
This is the town I live in - it looks tiny from the air, and it is a small town relative to the bigger estates to the east. Look at all that national park! Full of tracks to explore, that we could see from the air. And that's the beach I surf at (including this weekend, which made me so happy).
YOu can also see the 'river' - more of a swap fed by aquifers really and it's not open to the sea. It looks so small from the air. Last night we walked along it and saw more micro vews of wrigglers, ready to be mossies for the summer.
Look at the walking track here and see how close it is to the edge of the cliffs, and how big chunks are about to drop off, as they do, sliding into the sea after rain. You'd wanna hope you aren't walking along that beach when it happens.
I think I'd thought about going up for so long that I didn't even register fear at all - my heart rate didn't change a beat, but I guess I was too busy looking at it all! We flew from his place to Point Roadnight and back along the coast to Bells Beach and Point Addis.
He saws sometimes you can see the herd of white deer down there, but also whales and sharks and big schools of fish.
Honestly I could have stayed up for hours, but we only had a blissful fifteen minutes, sadly.
There's the big Alcoa coal mine stack (it shut down a few years ago thank god) which stands as a monument to the past. Last week he flew over it and you could see right down the stack - he posts pictures on the local Facebook group for the area so we all get to see our beautiful town from the air.
Sorry these photos are out of sequence - I'm about to go for a surf so want to set this to schedule as I'm sure you'll all get a kick out of it.
This is the plane in his shed. He's actually got three - well, his partner has one and they have another faster one for going over to Tassie.
Hope you all had - or will have - as an amazing a Sunday as this.
