Bright Easter

Ok, back again. Had a fantastic case of Gastro last week that wasted 5 days of my life. Did nothing, things were dark. Luckily Easter was the light at the end of the tunnel and after 4 days of missing work I went straight to Bright to finish the recovery. Surrounded by some of my closest friends, great weather, great food and some pretty good flying, things definitely perked up. With the weather like it was, sometimes it doesn't even matter if you fly or not, it is just great to be there.

On the Friday, it was a southerly day so we headed to the Pines. I have never flown there so it was good. We stood there on only a medium size hill with what looked like limited thermals. John and I decided to setup anyway.


Rob decided to leave the glider on the car. Truckloads of Paraglider pilots also turned up. John launched first and the our suspisions were confirmed. He went down like he had rocks in his harness. A few paragliders launched with the same result. Then a couple of paragliders started going up. I was off in no time and the lift was still there. Got to 4500ft where the airspace restrictions kick in and moved on down the ridge. The next 2 hours were some of the sweetest flying I can remember. Soft thermals. Sun low. Good glides. I landed just past Mrytleford.

The next couple of days, we had some great flights off Mystic and Buffalo. It is great flying with others sometimes. The flight off Buffalo, I attempted to make it to Mt Feathertop.


I was flying from point to point and almost every decision was paying off. Until that is I got to the foothills of Feathertop and it was only bubbling. I spent about 25mins fluffing around until I finally landed in a nice green paddock near Harrietville.


The last day, Mark and I had setup on Mystic when a paraglider had a full collapse just off launch. She should be fine but they called in Helicopter to get her down to Melbourne. It is the second rescue attempt I have been involved in saving a paraglider pilot in trouble. We packed up but the helicopter coming in was pretty cool.


It created a dust cloud that hit us like a 9/11 dust cloud. This is after it cleared a little and I was willing to pull my head from behind the tree myself and Mark were hiding behind.