Extreme weather

The weather forecast for the weekend was very hot with winds of around 50km/hr in the mountains. But, further west and north there were areas of lighter wind forecasts.... After a lot of last minute phone calls and emails I headed to Deni on Friday night - arriving around midnight. Garry rolled in from Melbourne 1.5hrs later, with a driver, and Benn was driving west from Sydney. By 6am we were on the road driving north of Deniliquin, aiming to get to the lighter winds, tow up, and fly a long, long ways....
While I was listening to the weather warnings on the radio the night before the thought had crossed my mind that maybe I should stick around home just in case of fires - with them in mind the day looked like one of the really bad ones. But the house has been built with fires in mind, is very defendible, and I knew that there'd be people around to defend it if need be so I kept going. Flying wise it looked a bit iffy - like maybe it'd be fine to launch in but maybe it'd be crazy to. One thing was for sure, if we did get up early the potential of the day was huge. Cloudbase was supposed to be above 4,000m and the winds increasing to over 80km/hr up higher.
We knew there would be plenty of lift around - after a mild night the temperature passed 40degC around 10am - and just kept getting hotter. 10:30 and someone in the car said, "Hey does that look like dust ahead to you?" and it was. Pretty soon we were driving through a full-on dust storm, forcing us to slow down as the visibility worsened.
At this point, with more heat and wind yet to come, even thinking of flying seemed insane.
Eventually we arrived in Ivanhoe (the dust storm had mostly lessened by now) where we eventually met up with Benn. He'd driven for a good bit of the night to meet up with us and, several km's behind us on the Cobb Hwy, was forced to stop completely several times as the visibility reduced to several metres.
After discussing options over ice-creams in the Ivanhoe cafe (air conditioned - lovely) we headed north again.
Ivanhoe is supposedly on the border between 'red country' and 'black country' and we soon noticed the difference. Instead of a red dust deserty landscape with occational small stunted trees and lots of roly-poly bushes we were now driving through medium sized scrub sprinkled with taller trees - but not many landing options. In the early part of the flight, when you're scratching in light lift as you drift low over the ground, you really want to have plenty of landing options availeble. Launching in strong winds makes that even more important - the rotor from up-wind obstacles extends further and if you have to land running backwards you may cover some distance between touch-down and when you get the wing under control on the ground - an inconveniently placed tree or fence may ruin your whole day.
After inspecting a potential tow strip about 30km north of the town we returned and waited to see what the day would bring.
About 3pm the wind started backing off so after some chasing around we recieved permission to use the local airstrip to tow from. We set up in the heat (mid forties by now) and Garry launched first, getting away in a light cimb towards the clouds far above us. Ron launced nex, and myself after that. It took me three tows to get away - my first tow I landed about 4km down the road, on the second a radio malfunction occured, but on the third tow I connected with some light lift and drifted off downwind.
By now it was 6:30pm and Ron and Garry had been in the air of over an hour and were way ahead of me - but I was just happy to be flying. Once over 800m the worst of the heat was below me and by 2,500m I was deliciously cool as I circled in the light lift. I knew there wasn't any big distance left in the day but since I was drifting roughly with the Cobb Hwy south the goal was to just stay in the air for as long as possible (hopefully untill it cooled down on the ground).
The flying was really enjoyable and super smooth - so smooth that I took my helmet off and hung it on one foot for a while to enjoy the air a bit more! Visually it was stunning - the red dust, the outlines of old floods and dry creeks making it look like something on Mars, huge areas of dry desert sprinkled with island like clumps of trees, a wall of dust near the horizon to the west (not coming closer - I was watching!), dust devils ripping across the ground below, carrying the red dust right up to the clouds so that their bases had a reddish tinge, the single road visible streatching off into the distance, everything turning to gold and red as the sun slowly sank into the haze of the horizon....
My final glide was a good one, taking me km's down the road to land just after 8pm! After a quick 180 to land into the light wind I was just packed up by the time Benn arrived and we started the long drive back.
We met up with the others at the servo in Hay before grabbing fish and chips and going for a swim in the river - heavenly!
Back in Deni by midnight....
The next day Benn and I towed, but neither of us was able to fly for long. I landed about 7km downwind but the retrieve took over 3hrs - locked gates, roads not going where the map indicated, it was a good reminder that flying in this type of country carries it's own hazards. Phone coverage is limited to near the towns so keeping your driver updated with your position is very important. Devices like the sPOT tracker make flying here much safer - you know that even if you have to spend a night out in the bush you'll be found sooner rather than later.

Once we got back to Ron's place we started to hear the news of the devastation being caused by the fires back in Victoria. There was a fire burning within 50km of my house, with a wind change forecast to push it closer later that night so I rushed off. The change did come, but it was much colder and lighter than forecast, and by then 2 people had died in it. Further south over 200 people were killed by fire and more than 2,000 home burnt.

Updates....

wooo! I haven't updated for a while.... I'll quick chuck in the bare bones of some recent flights and flesh 'em out later.

Cool flight today, my first good fly over Mt Buffalo. Takeoff around 1pm, pretty windy conditions but it wasn't as rough as I was expecting and seemed to organise the lift into good lines. I climbed out, crossed to Clearspot, Blackfellas, back to Clearspot, good 1st half of the Buckland crossing but sinky on the 2nd, climbed out of the spur behind the Porepunkah airfield and flew in over Mt Buffalo. Got a good climb off the hot rocks to 2,400m and took some pics of the Chalet before heading on. There's actually quite a number of landing options up there, it's just most of them then require a long walk out... There were small, short lived cu's forming upwind of me so I pushed out towards them over the gap to Mt Mcloud and after getting down to 1,900m (sounds high, but the north plateau of Buffalo is up around 1,500m and it's a loooong scramble out through rough country if you land there) I eventually climbed back up. The further I looked the less clouds I saw so I decided to see if I could make it back. There was a thermal just before the chalet that got me near 2,700m (max height for the day) and again I had a lifty line for the first part of the crossing and got drilled in the second. The clearspot spur was working though and gave me the height to head over to Goldmine from just behind Wandiligong. There was some light lift along Goldmine which I played in before landing around 16:45. Considering the wind, the flying was much easier than I would have expected - lots of fun!