When the grey high-wing twin swooped low over Point Cook on 19 May, it marked the end of an adventure that had its roots a century ago.
Pilot Michael Smith had returned to whence he departed on 2 April, having flown nearly every mile of Australia's coastline, 100 years to the very day of the very first aerial circumnavigation of the continent. The ring was closed after six weeks of flying a schedule that was very loyal to the original.
Smith, in Seabear VH-OMS Southern Sun, retraced the route flown in 1924 by RAAF pilots WGCDR SJ Goble and FLTLT IE McIntyre in a Fairey Mk II D floatplane. It was an ambitious task, trying match Goble and McIntyre mile-for-mile and landing-for-landing, but Smith pulled it off in spectacular fashion with only a few minor variations.
"I feel like someone who's just finished their Year 12 exams and is wondering what Summer is going to bring," he told Australian Flying after he got home. "I started researching this in 2019, so five years of planning. Every great adventure begins with an Excel spreadsheet it seems.
"The six weeks of doing the actual flying in some ways feels like the easy part because I'm very thorough with the research. Part of the joy along the way was being a bit flexible."
Smith's anti-clockwise circumnavigation was there for the world to follow on the internet, supplemented with photos, videos and the odd live-stream along the way. In some locations he would land to the sound of crickets; in others the locals turned out.
"I'm probably a bit guilty of not making big announcements about what I was going to do, but people find out about it along the way," he said.
"Sometimes I'd arrive and there'd be 20-30 people from a flying club who knew I was coming, and a BBQ was already on. I'd get to other places and there wouldn't be a soul in sight!
"Both are great, because it was lovely to meet people and share stories, but the flipside is I have to cut video and do stories along the way, so the nights where there was no-one around it was great to be able to sit down and get a few things done."
Since Goble and McIntyre completed their 1924 adventure, many pilots have followed with their own circumnavigations. What made Smith's journey so remarkable is that he carried with him the spirit of the original flight.
"I completely appreciate that I'm not Robinson Crusoe in flying around Australia," he explained. "It was the fact that [Goble and McIntyre] took 44 days and I did the same thing.
"There were times that I regretted saying I was going to do that, because I had 10 days in Carnarvon and six days at Horn Island, but then rushing through other places. There were times that I wish I'd said I'd fly every second day and enjoy everywhere I go.
"But when I would go somewhere and tell people that Goble and McIntyre landed on this piece of water 100 years ago to the day, and often to the hour, they'd feel really good and you could see how people responded to that."
Smith found himself on radio or interviewed for the local newspapers in several spots that he visited, showing how much the communities appreciated his highlighting their role in Goble and McIntyre's flight.
"They loved the fact that I made the effort to do it 100 years later to the very day. In the end I was glad I stuck to the original itinerary because that made it special for the people."
As anyone who's flown GA in Australia knows, even the shortest legs can be queered by weather. Sticking to a mega-multiple plan faithful to a day and an hour sounds like a plan to fail from the beginning. On Day One, Smith got as far as Bairnsdale when his target had been Sydney. Weather, it seems, was the common factor in two flights made 100 years apart.
"It made me constantly think about what it was like for Goble and McIntyre," he mused. "They were in Cooktown for three nights. They struggled with weather up the east coast and so did I! The two days I was there it rained torrentially, relentlessly and there wasn't a hope in hell of my flying on those days anyway.
"When I look at how the world has changed over 100 years, the weather then and now was remarkably the same! Literally, wherever they got stuck with weather I was also dealing with it.
"I had a better time of it than they did, because I could look at the radar and see it moving through, knowing that in two hours I'd be able to take off again, or could go around a cell before continuing up the coast. So although the weather was similar, I had much better ways of dealing with it than they did."
Smith made only one planned deviation that the original RAAF pilots didn't have on their itinerary. Goble and McIntyre flew from Thursday Island directly across the vast mouth of the Gulf of Carpentaria, whereas the Southern Sun traced the entire coast.
Smith truncated a six-day layover at Thursday (Horn) Island to enable him to trace the coast and still keep on schedule.
"I was OK with that variation because I wanted to see every mile of the Australian coast and it didn't delay me; I got to Elcho Island the same day they landed there. The gulf is spectacular!"
Cynics would remark that Smith did nothing special because technology and reliability tends to lower the intrepidity level somewhat, but the journey of the Southern Sun contained challenges that Goble and McIntyre never had to meet.
"There were things I had to deal with that they didn't," Smith said. "I was keen to land on the water at every spot that they did, but sometimes it wasn't possible. For example, on Day Two they landed on the Myall River. I wasn't able to do that because today the speed limit is 4 kt. In 1924 there were no speed limits on the water.
"I wasn't able to land on the water in Darwin Harbour because ATC wouldn't give me clearance. They said things were too busy.
"There was another speed limit issue at Port Hedland, so I couldn't land there. It took me four-and-a-half months to get permission to land on the Swan River! That's just part of how the world has changed. Goble and McIntyre could just land wherever they wanted to."
True, but whereas Southern Sun had no more reliability issue than a bit of an oil leak, the RAAF Fairey MkII D needed a complete engine change necessitating a frustrating 10-day surcease in Carnarvon, WA. Yes, Michael Smith did sit in Carnarvon for 10 days re-enacting the down-time.
Conversely, rough water at Esperance blocked Goble and McIntyre from alighting on the harbour, forcing them to continue on to their next scheduled stop. Smith was greeted with more friendly water, so did what they could not.
"They had a plan to stop at Esperance, but when they got there the water in the harbour was too rough, so they kept going. I'd never been to Esperance, and they wanted to go there, so I stopped there for one night and was really glad I did ... it's a beautiful place."
It was not the only location Smith was seeing for the first time, and the journey gave him a greater appreciation of the wide, brown Australia.
"I'd never flown west of Darwin or Port Lincoln," he pointed out, "so to have flown around the world and not flown around Australia was a massive shortcoming.
"It was a great way to do it and I was so looking forward to seeing the Kimberley and the Great Australian Bight. And they were the two highlights of the trip!"
Smith's circumnavigation contained one more highlight: the arrival back at Point Cook. In typical southern Victoria fashion, the weather did its best to baulk the schedule at the last minute, but by that time there was no stopping the Southern Sun.
"Arriving back at Point Cook was magical!," Smith remembers with absolute joy. "It had been a tough day's flying. There had been a lot of weather to fly around, which is always taxing.
"I was pretty tired, but I managed to get in a couple of circuits over St Kilda, because that's where they touched down on the water, then went over to Point Cook.
"I flew over the base at 500 feet and I could see the people on the ground, the fire trucks and the brass band. I thought 'Oh, wow! They've really turned it on.'
"To taxi in and find all those people there was just fantastic. People who had been following me on the internet, or had been listening to Darren James on the radio–because he's been talking about it a lot–were there at Point Cook, which was really nice. It felt great."
Fire trucks forming a traditional water bridge greeted Michael Smith as he rolled off the runway and stopped before an applauding crowd. There, one more delight presented itself: David Goble, grandson of WGCDR SJ Goble, gifted Smith with a photograph of the Fairey MkII D arriving at Point Cook 100 years ago to the day. Word is, that after being framed, it's heading straight to the pool room.
With another adventure successfully under his belt, Smith is now partly resting and partly catching up with work after six weeks away. But in the back of his mind is the knowledge that the period 1920-1930 was the golden age of pioneering aviation in Australia, meaning the window for further centenary re-enactments is wide open right now.
In particular, 2028 happens to be the 100th anniversary of the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean by a certain couple of Australian aviators. Smith already has embryonic plans for more adventures, but a cursory mention of this one seems to have sparked a new interest.
"I might start having a very loose look at that.
"Trans-Pacific ... yeah."