March 29th Temora to Tocumwal

Alarm woke us at 6am and after a quick shower, breakfast and pack of the luggage, Ian drove us back to the airport in time for the 8am briefing.

After the briefing we had to make room for Keith Webb the photographer who was joining us on this leg.  We were able to offload some of our luggage into the Hudson and therefore were not overloaded.  The morning was very calm and warm and we finally departed at 10.06 am followed a couple of Yaks out on runway 36.  Rod Edwards followed us in his Stearman.    Keith was able to get some fantastic photos of the Stearman as Rod formatted on us.  A very easy 50 minute flight over pretty country was made more enjoyable by answering the questionnaire on the way. Our first sightings of Tocumwal airfield were vastly different to what we had envisioned.  The off duty runways were untidy and fairly neglected.  We landed on runway 36 a and were directed to a parking spot on the tarmac as a display plane.  The Tigers, Avro and Stearman were parked close by out on the grass but many other aircraft were parked about 300m away across rough long lupin stubble – quite a hike to the Aero Club.

The Club provided a light lunch and then we sat with the plane whilst the GILP (general icecream licking public) walked around and took photos of the craft.  Quite a number of school groups also came past and the conduct of these kids was exemplary.  I spent a short time catching up on the blog then we packed up and caught a bus back to the hotel where we had a rest and uploaded some blog posts finally.  Unfortunately I had not downloaded any photos so they were to be added later.

The evenings dinner booking was at the Toc Golf Club which was a short walk from our hotel.  A lovely meal was finished off by a rousing enthusiast speech presented by a local aviation veteran.  His historical knowledge of the US involvement in the development of the defenses in the area was of great interest.