After persuading Nicola that we should try the $70 flight
tour we somehow ended up with Jonah Hill’s doppelganger as our pilot. His
overly jokey personality and very youthful looks didn’t ease Nicola’s worries
and after a rather shaky take off from the beach (narrowly avoiding driving
through the sea) we flew into the skies above Fraser Island. I was sat next to the
main door, which didn’t really seem to shut properly and Jonah Hill started
giving us a tour of the island however, we couldn’t really hear much of what he
was saying due to the noise inside the plane. The views were incredible, we
could see a long way down 75 mile beach and we passed over some huge lakes and
even saw a humpback whale passing by in the sea (Hervey Bay is apparently the
whale watching capital of the world and the whale season was coming to a close
so we only saw the one whale). The views didn’t really help Nicola relax as her
nerves were continually tested by the plane dropping up and down through
altitude – our pilot took a brief break from flying to send a text message
which didn’t help things much either.
After 20 minutes or so of flying it was time to land and as
we approached the beach (which as outlined before is the island’s highway and runway) we were a little nervous as
there were a number of 4x4s, buses and people directly beneath us who didn’t
seem to want to move out of the way for us. We somehow managed to land
extremely smoothly and without flying into any vehicles/people and were pleased
to put two feet back on solid ground. After the flight I asked the pilot how
long he’d been flying and he informed us how it was his family’s business and
he had been in and around planes on the island his whole life and been flying
himself for 4 years and completed between 2 and 10 flights per day – if he had
said this before we took off I think
we would have been more at ease. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic experience...
though Nicola would never do it again.
  |
| Before take off.. After take off..... |
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| The Maheno Shipwreck |
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