– Steve Hitchen
Although most of Australia will experience mixed flying weather this weekend, we need to spare a thought for aviators in south-east Queensland, who are about to be slammed pretty heavily by Cyclone Alfred. Current predictions are that it will cross the coast tomorrow morning centred just north of Brisbane. The danger area runs from Double Island Point to Grafton, with airports like Gympie, Caloundra, Caboolture, Redcliffe, Archerfield, Southport, Watts Bridge and all the way down to Ballina Byron in Alfred's sights. Wind up to 70 kt are on the cards; rainfall on Saturday could be up to 250 mm. Traditionally, GA fares poorly in flooding and very high winds, so aviators should be canceling flying plans and instead doing everything they can to protect aircraft. The rest of the country can do nothing but wish them the best, then as always, help pick up the pieces later on. Hang in there, SEQ, the rest of Australia is with you.
News that Central Coast Council is to proceed with a master plan for Warnervale Airport has been greeted in the GA community like a sore wound has finally healed. Airport operators–particularly Central Coast Aero Club–has been biting its nails for several years as elements within the council have tried a number of nefarious ways to have the airport cease operations. They've tried it all from stopping trees being pruned to clandestinely shortening the runway. All this time CCAC, which has freehold land with access to the airside, has been jammed in limbo because they had no security of future. Now, with the master plan set to go ahead, Warnervale has the potential to become a major airport in Sydney's north capable of taking refugees from a WSA-plagued Bankstown. But the shine on the diamond is not as lustrous as it could be. The council vote to adopt the plan was 8-7, meaning only one councillor would have to be turned for the master plan to be binned. Although this is a tenuous margin, it is one that operators on many municipal airports around Australia would love to have. For them, anti-airport factions still rule the roost, doing their best to stifle airport development and movements so they can justify converting the airport into housing and industrial estates. This, no doubt, would have been Warnervale's fate had the wind not changed in the council chambers. Hopefully, GA is able to hold up Warnervale as an example to other airport-owning councils of how an airport can be leveraged as an asset and not denigrated as a liability.
For those old enough to remember the grainy black-and-white images of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 (often referred to as "the moonwalk" even though there were another five of those), it's amazing that we have reached a point in history where there are only four people left alive who set foot on another celestial body. One of those, Apollo 16 LM pilot Charles M. Duke, is coming out here for Avalon this year. Most Australians will not have heard of Duke; you need to be an Apollo devotee to be able to name any Apollo astronaut not on Apollo 11. Duke, Buzz Aldrin, Dave Scott and Harrison Schmitt will be hoping they are able to swell the ranks of the living moonwalkers club soon, when NASA's Artemis program returns people to the moon after an absence of more than half a century. How poignant would it be for the pioneers of Apollo to be able to personally greet the new generation of Artemis moonwalkers? All things going well, that's something we can look forward to.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch