24 Mar Mr Sponge’s Flying Tour
November Whiskey X-ray, my four seater Piper Turbo Arrow IV went in for its annual overhaul just before Christmas last year. The initial inspection revealed extensive damage to one of its six cylinders, so waiting for a replacement would take time. It was an opportunity to plan a trip to Perth and back. Nikki Maartens and I had undertaken a similar excursion in 2022 however on reaching the West Australian border there were storm warnings for Esperance and Albany so we had to divert to Kalgoorlie thus failing to round Cape Leeuwin. Perhaps a second attempt would succeed.
Certainly, it would be better prepared. During the ‘22 excursion I had punctured a tyre landing in Caiguna WA. Fortunately, it was the front tyre, so it was possible to inflate it enough to enable a take-off to Kalgoorlie where it was repaired. Since then, there had been punctures in the main landing gear on two occasions and if there hadn’t been repair facilities to hand each time there would have been serious delays. So, a priority for the next trip was to make sure I could change a tyre in the wild and, if necessary, alone. This meant packing spare tyres, tubes and the necessary tools including a jack and a tyre pump.
My plan was to fly south to Newcastle via Stanthorpe and from there to follow the coast all the way to Perth. It was to be a solo tour. Remember Mr Sponge the hero of RS Surtees’s novel, “Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour”. Solo because you can ask friends and family to take you in for a day or two. Asking them to take in your friends as well is too much.
The plane was ready for testing towards the end of January so after test flights to Noosa and Dunwich, I took off for Stanthorpe on the 7th of February. It might have been a better day for Lock and Ros who were overrun with tradesmen finishing home alterations that have been going on for ages, but they took it in their stride. They have perfected the art of growing vegetables on a solid rock hillside and the kitchen was operational, so we had a delicious dinner.
Next stop Newcastle. Following my return from Indonesia in 2002 I bought vacant land around Caloundra, built spec houses and sold them on. It was profitable for three or four years, mainly because I had a reliable builder, Max Keegan. When the trade became unprofitable, I gave it up, but Max and I remained friends and often played golf together. Then he and his wife Elaine fell out of love with Noosa. Elaine is a Newcastle Knights supporter, so the answer was a move to Newie.
The general aviation aerodrome for Newie is Maitland. It nestles in the eastern foothills of the Great Dividing Range immediately to the northwest. These hills are not high but the Barrington Tops to the north include peaks over 5,000 feet so care is required approaching from that direction with patchy cloud around and there was. Regardless I landed on schedule and my hosts were there to meet me. During the forty-minute drive into town I was left in no doubt Max and Elaine were happy campers. They have settled into Newcastle with a vengeance and love it and during my brief stopover came to understand why.
After lunch on the balcony of their new downtown apartment with its views upriver to Nobby’s Lighthouse we took a tram to Nobby’s beach and walked to the ocean baths. As far as I know there is no such thing in Queensland however they are popular in NSW and have been around for ages. Newcastle’s is new, the biggest I have ever seen and tempting. We walked back through the parklands lining the south side of the Hunter River with views across to the Docklands. Few saw any future for the city when, in 1999, the BHP steelworks employing 2,000 closed after 84 years operation. But Australia’s oldest export port rallied and is still the largest on Australia’s East Coast shipping coal, grain, vegetable oils, alumina, fertiliser, and ore concentrates worldwide.
The town planners have done a great job. Industry lines the northern banks of the river with the south side reserved for commerce and medium density residential. It’s a great combination bought to life by the incessant movement of bulk carriers and tugs, and it looked even better later that night as we sipped our Campari sodas in a trendy south bank café.
But the show must go on so after a short visit to K Mart to pick up a high viz vest Max and Elaine drove me back to Maitland for my first foray into an aerodrome with regular passenger operations, Shellharbour. In the wake of 9/11, the USA mandated security checks for all airside personnel (including pilots) at such airports. Nanny state Australia followed suit and the Aviation Security Identification Card (ASIC) was introduced. I applied for one early in January but had still not received it so was hoping a high viz vest would make me look official.
Rather than fly around Sydney to the West I decided to take the VFR route, coastal over water below five hundred feet, from Long Reef Point, Narrabeen to Jibbon Point, Cronulla. It’s better to take care flying low over water in the vicinity of steep cliffs but the autopilot was holding well so I was able to take a few photos but was unable to capture Margaret Armstrong’s family home on the cliffs just to the north of Dee Why Beach. My last visit to Sydney had been a year or so earlier to attend Marg’s funeral. The wake had been at the family home. I’ve been to too many
funerals. Imagine the party you could have if they were still around. Dick, Nicky, Sandy, Woody, Jacko, Stratty, Paul. Apart from Marg’s sister Catherine whom I knew from London days there wasn’t another familiar face. I took a cab to Mascot and flew home.
Botany Bay revived a few memories as well. The Single Point Mooring off Bumbora Point went when the Total Refinery at Matraville was closed in 1985. The Caltex Refinery at Kurnell didn’t do much better. It was converted into a fuel import terminal twenty years later. But the loading jetty that was there when I left the Maritime Services Board of NSW in 1973 is still there. And so is the spot where Captain Cook brutally invaded Australia in a rowing boat on the 26th of January 1770. We have almost gone full circle. James Cook used wind power to get here and if you believe Blackout Bowen, wind will take us into the future.
After my flight down memory lane, I arrived in Shellharbour around 11.30 am. I shouldn’t have worried about the ASIC. There were no safety or security drones, so I was able to refuel, park and exit unmolested. Had I wasted $12 on a high viz vest, not to mention $320 on the security clearance card. My nephew Sam was there to meet me and after a tour of the escarpment to the west arrived in Thirroul Heights in time to meet his boys back from school. After all the maudlin stuff about funerals Fitzy and Charlie Wilson were the perfect antidote. Friday evening is cricket practice and thanks to the parent organisers well attended because the boys and girls participating were learning to bat, bowl and catch and enjoying themselves at the same time. I watched some of the older children, around twelve I would say, practicing in the nets. There were some very promising bowlers.
Sam’s Canadian wife, Dom, was home preparing dinner when we returned from cricket. Don’t believe what they tell you about Canadian cuisine, it was delicious. but there was still time for the chef to talk about her job with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. No doubt its more complicated than this summary, but essentially her job is to keep aboriginal kids in remote communities out of jail. That means she spends a lot of time visiting shanties and if they are anything like Balgo Hill, Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing or Borroloola it’s a labour of deep commitment.
On the Saturday morning Sam took me to Port Kembla where we joined a tour of the Bluescope’s steelworks, brilliant. Having arrived from Newcastle where steelmaking had been shut down, visiting the largest of Australia’s four remaining steel mills was an exciting and illuminating experience. It manufactures around three million tonnes a year of slab, hot rolled coil and plate products. One reason for the tour’s success was that our guides were retired plant employees who knew their stuff. Not only that, they were also familiar with steel making in other countries such as China where there are something like three thousand steel mills (but, according to them, not one to compete with Port Kembla for quality). No wonder they need so much of our iron ore.
I’ve seen big oil and gas plants around the world and giant shipyards in Korea but nothing to rival the size and power of these Port Kembla works. Steel manufacturing is a continuous 365 day a year process starting with a blast furnace where coke is used to reduce a continuous feed of iron ore into molten pig iron. The number five blast furnace currently in operation at Port Kembla is around ninety metres tall and produces some four thousand tonnes of molten iron daily. Torpedo ladles transfer the pig iron in its molten state directly to the steel making batch process plant
where around 250 tonnes of molten iron and 65 tonnes of recycled scrap steel are cooked in a tilting furnace at temperatures around 1,650oC. There was a frisson of excitement during our tour when there was a spectacular boilover as the scrap steel was tipped into the furnace and we were obliged to retreat. In the early days of the plant, its dark satanic mill era, casualties were commonplace, not so any longer.
I asked one of our guides if he thought a carbon dioxide emission free steel making process would ever be viable. I expected a “no”, but the reply was “yes but it will be at least twenty years from now”.
The tour plan had included a stop in Merimbula and overnight at the Hotel Australasia in Eden but there were too many moving parts to this idea so I decided Sunday would be a leisurely examination of the coastline from Shellharbour to Melbourne with a twizzle stop in Mallacoota. Flight tracking shows that having departed shortly after 11am I levelled off at two thousand five hundred feet heading south to join the coast at Shoalhaven Heads. From there down to Mallacoota the coast is typically a series of craggy headlands anchoring crescent shaped golden beaches. My last visit down this way had been in February 2019 as a relatively new part owner in the Merry Beach Caravan Park just to the south of Kioloa. Ten months later I was having kittens as I listened to reports of the bushfires coming to within three hundred metres of the park cabins. It was a terrifying time but four years on there is no sign of the worst bushfires ever experienced in New South Wales. I’m no expert but it seems obvious that to me those national parks are busily regenerating tinder and waiting for the next severe heat wave. Six months after the last fire my partners and I sold Merry Beach. I’m delighted I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
It’s a different coastline from Mallacoota to Melbourne. Apart from a few features between Cape Howe and Wilson’s Promontory it’s a beach stretching nearly two hundred miles . This includes the Ninety Mile Beach between Lake’s Entrance and McLoughlin’s Beach which would be a testing if not tedious walk. And there didn’t seem to be much point in following the coastline all the way around Wilsons Promontory to Port Philip so at Port Albert I turned for Tyabb, the first waypoint for my descent into Moorabbin. An extremely helpful tower controller gave me a straight in approach to the north south runway, easy. There was barely time to refuel and secure the plane before Lucinda arrived to whisk me off to my favourite Melbourne mansion just yards away from the Cabrini Hospital where time to time my South African friend Niki works his surgical magic. Niki and I had flown to Perth together in 2022 so he was more than interested in how the flight had gone thus far.
My first task on Monday was to call a cousin, Tim North, with a view to a get-together. I had missed him during earlier visits so was delighted when he not only answered my call but also suggested we meet for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Prahran. It gave me time to catch a tram into St Kilda Road to visit the NGV’s European collection. A morning stroll is more than enough to take in the cream of its masterpieces. Afterwards I took a number six tram back to Prahran High Street where I had tons of time to find Osteria Renata. I was treated like a long-lost friend when I told the waitress I was joining Mr North. Tim arrived a few minutes later in a pair of Okanuis looking more like a castaway than a SC. There had been no need to dress. It was a lively lunch exchanging family gossip including fond memories of Tim’s father Octy.
Tuesday morning, Federation Square. As I photographed Tom Roberts’s Shearing the Rams a passing security officer kindly offered to photograph me with the famous image. I’m reminded vividly of the scents and sounds, and the polished timbers of the Huntley shed where we sheared our Mt Oscar sheep nearly seventy years ago. I then spent the rest of the morning looking in vain for a John Brack portrait I will only remember when I see it. Slightly irritated I crossed the square and settled in for a counter lunch and a view across the river at Taxi. I’ve been going there for a long time and wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps Melbourne is a place where dud restaurants are quickly caught out and disappear. Later that evening I took Niki and Lucinda and their other house guest, Lucinda’s goddaughter Jane to Bistro Gitan in South Yarra. Another great success but as we were leaving storm clouds were brewing. Good weather doesn’t last long down south.
The storm hit the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne hardest and many were blacked out. Malvern escaped the worst of it but there had been hail around Moorabbin. Next morning I was able to call the airfield safety officer who kindly found NWX, took photos and confirmed the plane was undamaged. But it had been a bad storm and later in the morning Kerry Collison, my publisher who lives in Waverley called to say he was still without power and to cancel our scheduled lunch.
As I left Moorabbin Friday morning there was no sign of Tuesday night’s mayhem. Having taken off into the south I followed the Bay round to Portsea, crossed over the Port Phillip entrance and headed for Adelaide coastal over water. The waters in the Port Philip entrance were no less tortured than they were in May 2013 when as the only passenger on board the MV Buxstar from Singapore to Sydney we briefly called in to Melbourne. Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim off Cheviot Beach just two kilometres to the east of the entrance in 1967 and was never seen again.
The coastline from Apollo Bay to the South Australian border is littered with windmills. Many were there when I sailed past in 2013 so there has been time to assess their performance. I have a feeling we would have heard about it by now if they had met expectations. But fair debate about power generation options in Australia is impossible while the minister for climate change and expensive energy is a buffoon.
The windmills petered out after the Victorian border and in no time, I was crossing Lake Alexandrina, ultimate destination for the mighty Murray Darling River system. I was born on the banks of Myall Creek, a distant tributary around 1,500 kilometres upstream. Could there be a spiritual connection? Air traffic controllers in the tower at Adelaide’s international and domestic airport might have agreed. My planned approach into Parafield from the south took me into the path of a Qantas flight on descent into Adelaide. It had to be diverted. I had to turn back over the Adelaide Hills and head north to a position which gave me an approach into Parafield from the east. Une grande faux pas.
Gerald Lipman was there to meet me. He had been the Royal Bank of Canada’s chief in Singapore in 1992 when I had rejoined RJ Brown and Associates. He and his wife Louise had become friends and we had kept in touch. I spent a night with them in Adelaide during my 2013 cruise on the Buxstar and in 2016 when I was there for the second England Australia cricket test had seen them briefly at the Oval. So, it was nice to catch up in slightly more relaxed circumstances. They live in Norwood which is a good twenty-minute drive back towards the city. I had settled in in no time and afterwards we strolled down to the local Thai where we filled in the gaps over a relaxed dinner.
On Saturday morning Gerald took me into the Adelaide Hills which had given me so much trouble the day before. We stopped at the Mount Lofty Summit Café for coffee and a panoramic view of Adelaide and its three airports, Adelaide (domestic and international), Parafield (light aircraft) and RAAF Edinburgh. Before landing at Parafield the day before, my air traffic controller had asked me to be sure to telephone them on arrival which I had done. The controller was friendly and helpful and gave me clear directions for my eventual departure from Parafield to Port Lincoln. From Mount Lofty I could see my exit route and a few good landmarks and, in the event, had no problems.
In years gone by well to do families built retreats on Mount Lofty to escape the worst of the summer heat. Monuments to a golden age which had all but expired with the demise of Holden. But it’s not all bad news. South Australia is becoming an agricultural powerhouse exporting wheat, barley, canola and lentils via massive terminals at Port Adelaide, Ardrossan, Port Giles, Port Pirie and Port Lincoln, many of them prominent landmarks for my flight to Port Lincoln two days later. And on top of this there is the promise of AUKUS manna from heaven.
Gerald’s sister Suzy and her husband Zen who live round the corner have a grass tennis court. Where else but Adelaide would one find such a gem. And it’s used most weekends. On Saturday afternoon a disparate collection of family and friends of varying abilities played doubles until cocktail hour. I was persuaded to play for the first time in ten years. It nearly killed me, but it was worth the effort and after a few games I was managing to return a few balls. Could this be a new start?
On Sunday morning I accompanied Gerald and Louise into St Peter’s Cathedral for Choral Eucharist. Before the service Louise took her bible class and while she was doing that, I suspect Gerald was running an eye over the parish books. He hasn’t let retirement interrupt his interest in high finance and I was more than interested to hear of his involvement as finance director with Ngutu College, a school in North Adelaide open to all children but with a minimum indigenous student content of fifty percent.
The next leg of my tour involved crossing the Spencer Gulf. It wasn’t my first. That had been in April 2000 on a Whyalla Airlines flight from Adelaide to Whyalla to inspect a heavy crude oil processing plant at Port Bonython. Our pilot had collected my colleagues and me from the main passenger terminal, loaded our luggage into a car, driven us to the plane, loaded our luggage onto it and done the same in reverse in Whyalla by which time there was a bond. A month later that plane, that young pilot and his seven passengers crashed into the Spencer Gulf during an identical flight. There were no survivors. The initial investigation found pilot error despite the fact Ben Mackiewicz had reported both engines lost. Fortunately, the plane was recovered, manufacturing defects were discovered in the engine crankshafts and our young hero’s name was cleared. It upset me and there was no way I was taking on a Spencer Gulf crossing without a life jacket even if it wasn’t a statutory requirement.
I reached Port Lincoln unscathed and having refuelled was interested to find a parking space next door to VH-XTA, a Cessna 337G scout plane for the Stehr Group, one of the pioneers of southern bluefin tuna industry. The Port Lincoln story goes back to the sixties when Dinko Lukin built the Orao, the first boat to fish SBT using the pole and line method; fish would be coaxed into a feeding frenzy during which they would be easy to catch with a non-baited non-barbed hook. Fishermen standing in the stern of the fishing vessel would simply catapult the fish, typically weighing 60 kg, into a hold behind. No wonder Dinko’s son Dean who grew up fishing tuna became Australia’s first Olympic weightlifting gold medallist in 1984.
That was also the year quotas were imposed. In the mid-1970s it was becoming clear the success of the industry was leading to its demise. Overfishing was threatening to wipe SBT out. The solution for a sustainable industry was to capture less but to double the weight by “ranching” in floating cages anchored off Port Lincoln. The fish are captured live in the Great Australian Bight between Fowlers Bay and Portland between December and March and ranched off Port Lincoln from December to September. That’s a 1,300 kilometer stretch of coast for spotter planes to patrol. The image embedded above is VH-XTA’s flight path for the 17th of February, just two days before my arrival in Port Lincoln. She was on patrol for over six hours, and it looks like something of interest was found 150km southwest of Port Lincoln.
Dinko Lukin died in 2011 and left Dinko Seafoods, to his second wife Lukina who has successfully maintained her husband’s legacy. My initial plan for my trip to Perth in 2022 included a stop in Port Lincoln. I called Lukina and asked her as a retired eel farmer if she would be happy for me to visit her tuna ranching operation. No problem. In the event by the time Nicky and I had reached Wilpena Pound we were pressed for time so bypassed Port Lincoln for Ceduna. I called to apologise. No problem, try again next time, so I did. I called her from Adelaide shortly before my departure only to find she was in Adelaide as well and that all her tuna stocks were in transit to Port Lincoln so there was nothing to see. Perhaps another time. It meant I was able to drive to Coffin Bay for dinner. They gave me a bad oyster for my pains. Don’t eat oysters in summer stupid. My Tuesday target was the Nullarbor Roadhouse on the Western Australia border.
From Ceduna on the coastline is strikingly defined by a sheer rock wall around thirty metres high with an endless ocean to the left and a flat, dry and treeless desert to the right. On this day the wall was shrouded by a ribbon of cloud secured by a steady southerly so even if there had been anything to see it would have been obscured. There had been no sign of animal life marine or terrestrial during my last flight so it’s unlikely I missed anything. According to nineteenth century novelist Henry Kingsley., the Nullarbor Plain is a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams.
But I did meet a nice family in the roadhouse. They had sold their house on the Central New South Wales Coast, bought a camper van, taken their nine and eleven year old children out of school and hit the road. Six months on they were loving it and thinking about where to go when they got to Darwin. Indonesia? He was a copywriter who had found he could work from anywhere. She had found she could keep up with her children’s education. How could I not be reminded of our family move to Mt Oscar in 1955, and the two years of home schooling that followed? They had been happy years. Perhaps too happy since I was not overjoyed with the next eight years at boarding school.
My goal for the next day was Albany but it would require a fuel stop in Esperance. I got off to an early start in ideal conditions but two hours later head winds were developing and as I joined the Esperance circuit a plane ahead of me warned conditions were marginal. I should have taken more notice and in the event nearly lost control as the plane “ballooned” on touchdown. The remedy is an immediate go around but foolishly I attempted to get the “balloon” under control. This merely created another higher bounce catapulting me off the runway barely missing a marker. As the left wing threatened to hit the ground it occurred to me I had lost it but somehow regained control, returned to the runway and pulled up in one piece.
As I taxied gingerly to the apron the pilot of the plane ahead of me radioed to check if I was OK. Yes, thank you but only just. Piper’s Turbo Arrow IV undercarriage never had a sterner test and survived. But the real lesson was always be prepared to abort a landing, particularly if conditions are marginal. I wasn’t in the mood to carry on to Albany, the forecast was for similar conditions. My new best friend who was flying a Vans offered me a lift into town and dropped me off outside the Pier Hotel. We’re full, try the Esperance Visitor Centre, just around the corner. The towns hotels were all booked but the kind woman looking after me in the centre persisted and eventually booked me into JJ’s Holiday Cottage in Castletown for one night.
Having recovered from the fraught landing I took a walk along Castletown Quays towards Esperance and its most prominent feature, the grain terminal. Grain production in the area was negligible until the 1960s when it was found that sandplain soils would produce barley, wheat and canola with the addition of superphosphate and certain trace elements. The port can now handle Panamax size bulk carriers and last year shipped nearly four million tonnes.
There were a few clouds around for my flight to Albany next morning but nothing to interrupt some spectacular views. Having arrived and refuelled I took a taxi into town where I checked into the Albany Motel and Apartments which proved to be extremely comfortable. Visiting Albany had been an ambition since I saw footage of the Anzac armada of 38 ships, 30,000 men and 12,000 horses preparing to leave King George Sound for Gallipoli on the 1st of November 1914. It included the 13th, 14th and 15th Battalions under the command of Colonel John Monash. My grandfather joined the 15th six months later and embarked for Egypt from Brisbane on the HMAT Kyarra in August 1915. I had thought he had gone via Albany as well and was hoping for an answer in the National Anzac Centre. This museum commands a wonderful view to King George Sound and mounts many effective displays but there was no sign of the Kyarra or my grandfather. This was neither here nor there, but it did strike me as odd that John Monash was barely mentioned. Indeed, Charles Bean stole the show which just goes to show history is what the historians tell us it is.
Albany is a prosperous town as it should be with a grain terminal that ships as much as Esperance or more and a much larger population. That means it has a 620 seat entertainment centre in a striking building deserving of its harbourside site. I had hoped there might be something to see that night but was out of luck. Even so, the website promises a busy pipeline of musicals, cabaret, and dance together with a Bell Shakespeare production of Midsummer Night’s Dream in April.
Some believe the Indian and Southern Oceans meet at Cape Leeuwin, the most south-westerly point of the Australian continent. This was my third Ocean in less than two weeks. Carry straight on for Cape Point and the Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 miles away or turn right for Perth, 150 miles away. I have a dinner date in the Good Fortune Roast Duck House in Northbridge so Perth it is.
My friends in Perth are former colleagues from Jakarta and Bangkok so it’s a lively night in the Duck House. Its just a stone’s throw from Leon and Kim’s house in North Perth and two years earlier when we were there, they had the first robot waiters I had ever seen. Leon and I worked together in Jakarta in 1998 and in 2003 we both worked on and off with Rodney in Bangkok. Rodney is a truly professional engineer who has successfully transitioned from oil and gas into the industries of the future with Andrew Forrest’s new company. He now works on more complicated concepts than restaurant robots and was amused to hear of my attempt to write the definitive book on climate science.
Leon buys wine in jeroboams he refills in friend Guido’s winery in the Swan Valley. I suspect Saturday mornings is an institution because we weren’t the only ones there sitting around a table trying various wines and moaning about life. Far more interesting than a trip to Dan Murphy’s and less expensive. Forty eight litres of finest shiraz for fifty dollars keep the change.
On Sunday I took a cab to the Royal Perth Yacht Club where after a beer with David Mossop on his new boat we had lunch in the clubhouse with its uninterrupted views to the Narrows Bridge. Theres been a lot of water through there since I first met David in the mid-seventies, my years of living dangerously in the Middle East. David had a car rental franchise in Dubai. His sister Sally ran the disco in the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain. In those days flitting between Dhahran, Bahrain and Dubai was no more than going to the coast for the weekend.
Later in the day Leon’s brother Perry and his family came for supper. Kim had started preparations for this Indonesian banquet on Saturday and I thought she was going overboard. No she wasn’t. One of Perry’s boys was almost seven feet tall, and the other wasn’t far behind, and they ate for WA. The girls weren’t far behind. Leon’s daughters are both athletes so did their fair share. It was an enjoyable evening, and we certainly weren’t short of wine.
It was time to turn around. After three weeks flying into the wind, I was looking forward to heading home above the clouds with the wind behind. Besides, there’s not a lot to see between Perth and Caloundra apart from the Cooper Creek and Ayres Rock. So, I took my leave of the Kleppes and on a fine Monday morning set sail for Kalgoorlie where I have an investment in a gold mining company.
Beacon Minerals bought the old Juardi mine outside Coolgardie in 2017. A drilling programme confirmed open cut mining methods would produce 2.5 Mt of ore with a gold content of 1.9 grams per tonne. A feasibility study indicated a 500,000 tonne a year plant would extract 80% of the gold from that ore and produce 126,000 ounces in five years for a profit of $800/ounce. Just as farmers have learned how to extract value from our bone dry continent, so have our miners. The plant was commissioned in August 2019 and produced its maiden gold bar (400 ounces) the following month. Now, five years on the mine has produced its promised bounty and is exhausted but, in the meantime, Beacon has been steadily buying tenements in the immediate area and now has around 400,000 ounces in reserve. Mining has commenced at the next pit, MacPhersons, just to the south of Coolgardie and I am keen to visit the works.
My friend Graham picked me up from the airport and we drove out to the site. Its difficult for an old oil and gas veteran to understand mining. Oil and gas is a large margin business. Mining, particularly at this level, is the opposite. There are around 1.3 grams of gold in every tonne of MacPhersons ore which must be trucked 40 kilometres north to the Jaurdi plant which, with any luck, processes and extracts one gram of that gold at a cost of $60 for a return of $100. This means Beacon is excavating, transporting and processing a tonne of ore for $60 and selling it for $100. Cost control is essential. It goes without saying that running an efficient operation is crucial but beyond that the main cost drivers are wages and fuel. The labour market in Kalgoorlie, spurred on by the recent construction and commissioning of the $500m Lynas Rare Earths Processing Facility employing 290 workers, has been tight and this is reflected in recent Beacon cost reports. On the other hand, some wage relief in the mining sector can be expected due to anticipated nickel closures. Who knows where fuel will go? Fortunately, gold is bullish at the moment.
After another day of general tourism round Kalgoorlie I took off for the Curtin Springs Roadhouse. My original plan had been Warburton, Ayres Rock, Curtin Springs with a one night stopover in Warburton but Graham advised against, so I braced myself for a four and a half hour flight direct to Ayers Rock. I didn’t get the tail wind I was hoping for but having settled in at sixteen thousand feet the flight passed comfortably until a messy descent into Ayers Rock and an officious airport security officer moaning that I had landed without prior permission, approached from the wrong side of the runway, and didn’t have an ASIC card. How about that for welcome to country? But that wasn’t the worst of it. There were clouds of flies and before I could refuel and depart had swallowed at least two. What an unpleasant place, let native title hold sway as far as I am concerned.
After that nothing would persuade me to spend the night in Curtin Springs which is just twenty minutes away. It was Birdsville or bust, another four hour leg, but not just any leg. There is nothing between Curtin Springs and Birdsville except the Simpson Desert and it vies with the Sahara for lack of hospitality. Mesmerising patterns of endless dunes running north and south. I concentrated on monitoring engine performance and looking for landing sites between the dunes. It was all unnecessary. Just as dusk began playing with the desert colours, I was delighted to spot Birdsville on the edge of a flooded Diamantina River. I had managed to send a text to my sister Sarah who had booked a room at the hotel. I parked as close as possible to bar, downed a XXXX and a curry and went to bed.
The sun was just over the horizon next morning as I took off for Charleville. The thrill of seeing the great rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin in flood never fades and an hour after leaving the last of the Diamantina channels behind I was crossing the Cooper Creek channel complex which is almost 80 kilometres wide. I’m reminded of the cattle barons who pioneered the remarkable industry that took advantage of this water and paid for many of those mansions on Mount Lofty.
Avgas is $3.99 a litre in Birdsville so I had taken the bare minimum needed to get me to Charleville. I was still twenty minutes out when the gauges started hovering over zero. Its an uncomfortable feeling but having landed and refuelled I calculated there had been 24 litres left in the tank, not so short of the required minimum.
The last leg of my trip was across familiar territory. Not quite over Dalby but there it was to the south as I approached the Bunyas and the Coopers Gap Wind Farm. These windmills will eventually extend north to Diamondy, a cousin’s farm. I fly over them regularly and they are often at a standstill however their design output is only 38% of nameplate capacity so that’s to be expected. The farm is currently selling power to the grid at $0.047 per unit which sounds reasonable, but this will not include transmission costs and losses, the not insignificant items Blackout Bowen doesn’t talk about.
Twenty seven days, two thousand litres of Avgas and twenty landings later I was home. The Sunshine Coast doesn’t have an opera house, a concert hall, a museum or great restaurants but it does have great Pacific Ocean beaches, a temperate climate and enough rain for a nice garden. It will do for now.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.