G'day Mike
How are you going to get your Rebel off the ground with six cases of
Southwark Bitter in the back? :-)
No one other than a South Australian would drink Southwark, unless somehow
you had acquired a taste for soapy water where you had washed your week old
hiking socks! The Rebel does not have any problem getting a big load off the
ground even in high density altitudes. My credo is that if I can get the
doors shut, the rebel will fly!
The Aussie AOPA directory helped me a lot. It even had some sheep
stations that had fuel available listed. That
got me through some long legs. And by long legs I mean short for a Rebel.
My Renegade only held 40 liters, burned 16 per hour, and was lucky to go
60mph with no wind. And there was always wind.
There are a number of directories that give outback details, but we are
going to lean on the experience of a fellow pilot who has done it all
before. He was a minister in a church and tended his flock right across the
outback in his Cessna150! He has lots of very interesting stories. One of my
friends has a Renegade and we had great fun touring together but mostly
around the places where fuel was available. Unfortunately he struck some
long grass on landing and tipped the Renegade onto her back causing a lot of
damage. He was so disheartened that he pushed the Renegade into a corner and
bought a Cessna. I fear that the Renegade will just sit mouldering in the
corner of his shed!
Are you going to try for Perth? I always wanted to do that. Impossible in
a Renegade. Maybe doable
in a Rebel.
Certainly doable in the Rebel, after all it is only 3,500k or thereabouts.
But the thought of that boring Nullabour plain which is
something like 700k wide does not thrill me that much. I rode through that
many years ago on a motorcycle when the road was only a track graded through
the desert. Now that is another story! It was a tough ride with breakdowns,
accidents, encounters with feral wildlife and problems with some of our
indigenous brothers!
We have thought that we would travel the coast to Adelaide then go north
toWilpena pound, William Creek etc to Alice Springs, turn right and go
across Queensland and then return down the coast through NSW and back to
Victoria. But I think that in mostly we will just go where the whim takes
us.
I am just getting my Rebel all prepared and well tested before we set off.
As you know Australia is a vast continent, sparsely populated and mostly
inhospitable desert or wasteland and it is not the place to have trouble
when you are 1000s of miles from anywhere!
regards
Ian Donaldson
